Can You EAR Me Now?

No one WANTS to have a bad day, especially on the first day of your college finals. BUT, as Murphy's Law states: If something bad can happen...well...it's gonna happen to me!

I had been sick with a sore throat that was literally kicking my behind and trying to cram for finals...well, at 5:30 in the morning, on the day of my finals, I was woken up by a funny tickling in my ear (not IN my ear) just around my ear lobe...I quickly reached up to get "whatever" it was and, as I did, I felt it go deep inside my ear...the pain was unbelievable..."What the hell was that?!?!" flashed through my mind as I clawed manically at my ear...In a blind panic I ran to the bathroom and grabbed a suction bulb (you know, those little round blue rubber thingys that you never really know WHAT they are used for) and I filled it with water to try and flush what ever "it" was out of my ear...While jumping up and down and screaming "What is it? What is it?" I squeezed water into my ear...there was a kind of whooshing sound and then excruciating pain followed...after about a minute of jumping, screaming, and flushing, something came out of my ear....upon close inspection of "the thing", I realized that it was an insect leg...that's right...the leg of a BUG!...This is where I basically lost my mind...I HATE bugs!...and apparently, I had one IN MY EAR!...I had no idea what kind of bug it was, which made the whole situation even worse...I managed to pick up the phone and call my husband at work and CALMLY tell him what was going on...He swears that all he heard was a high-pitched wail coming from the phone that sounded like "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"...Well, after decoding my incoherent screaming and crying, he figured out he needed to meet me at the emergency room...I don't remember driving to the hospital but I do remember the look on the nurses face when she laid eyes on me...Half of me was completely dry, the other half was soaking wet and I was completely out of my mind yelling something about the bug in my ear...I'm positive she thought I was on drugs or clinically insane (or both)...luckily there was no one else in the ER at 5:30am so I got right in....a wonderful man named Dave (who seemed to find endless humor in my predicament) came in to confirm there was, infact, a bug in my ear (like I didn't already know)...as he filled my ear with a special fluid to kill the bug he told me endless jokes about "how many cockroches does it take to screw in a light bulb" and about "the six foot cockroach that walked into a bar" ...once the bug was dead, Dave used tweezers (which hurt as much as the bug) to fish around in my already sore ear for about 15-20 seconds before he finally got ahold of my unwanted guest and pulled it out....I don't keep a dirty house and I never see bugs beyond the occasional wayward bug who finds their way in if the doors have been open for a while...BUT...I had a cockroach IN MY EAR!....OH MY GOD!...a cockroach!....Dave informed me (in between jokes) that they look for dark, warm, cavernous places to hide and this one was checking out my ear...it was about the size of a pinkie fingernail (the small size of the bug had NO affect on the amount of pain it caused me)....the fact that I tried to get it off my ear had caused it to run into the ear canal...apparently they can't back up and he had no where else to go....lucky me....so now to go with my sore throat, I have a sore ear that will need drops for the next week...the only good thing was I didn't even think about my sore throat through the whole ordeal...and after all that.....I still had finals that day