EARS and REARS

1. A teenage girl came with blood dripping from her left ear. For two days she had felt (and seen) maggots in her ear and had desperately tried to get them out. She was successful with a couple but the others were persistently holding on. Jeff tediously picked out the remaining three while the girl squirmed and moaned in pain.

2. One evening Pedro was driving home on his motorcycle and nearly fell off when a bug flew in his ear. He came to our house and began explaining the situation. Every couple of seconds his entire face would contort, his head would thrust to one side and his whole body would shake like he was being electrocuted. It would have been a rather humorous site if the poor man hadn’t been in so much pain. It is a funny sight to see a cricket appear larger than life through the otoscope. Pedro’s “enemy” had found the ear drum and was nibbling happily. After Lidocaine (for the ear), oil (to kill the bug), and tweezers, the wings, legs, and body were finally pulled out. Pedro took the bug home to show his family.

3. Another man came to the house with a bug in his ear. Jeff worked and worked and pulled out only a few bug parts. It took a long while since Jeff had to work around 25 years of wax build-up and a day’s worth of dried blood. Jeff gave up and told the man to come back the following day. When he didn’t show up Jeff said, “I am not surprised. Bugs in the ear will make a grown man cry. He had had enough.”

4. A lady came to the health clinic complaining of a red, raised, irritated sore on her bottom. Two weeks earlier while working in her garden, she felt something burrow under her skin. When Jeff looked closer he could see the tail of a plump parasite. He grabbed it with surgical instruments and the wiggly beast was
slowly extracted intact.

Jeff draining an abscess




co 2009 Amy McKissick