"EAR ACHES AND COLON SCRUBS"

(From the comedy diary "Yet Another Year in the Life of a Nerd,"
by 19-year-old college sophomore Andrew Hicks...)

        I used to consider myself a healthy person. Not healthy in
the sense of eating right and being in shape, healthy in the sense that
I never got sick. But I've had three cold viruses (or is it "viri"?) in
the last three months. It's the same group of symptoms, but each time it
comes back stronger than the last, like Jason from the Friday the 13th
movies. The first couple times a teenage girl could take him down with
an ax; by the seventh sequel it took a river of sulphuric acid. I don't
know if they sell that stuff in capsules over the counter, but I'd
definitely take it to get rid of this cold.

        I could tell from the beginning that this bout with microscopic
organisms was going to be my worst yet, so I tried to solicit some
advice to find out how I could avoid getting sick every month on the
same day. One girl told me to start eating better and exercising, then
launched into a list of less obvious things I should look into, like
colon scrubs and kola nuts. I still haven't figured out what the
testicles of the Pepsi CEO have to do with my health, and a colon scrub
sounds downright painful. I get this mental image of a Lysol-soaked
steel wool brush penetrating the most intimate part of my body. I'll
take my luck with the viri.

        I'm wondering if I'm just now beginning to reap all that I've
sown with my dietary habits. The way I've treated my body I'm
surprised I haven't had a heart attack already. You hear fat people
who claim their glands are acting up or they inherited some gene that
predisposed them to being overweight. I readily admit I just plain eat
too much and exercise too little. I'm trying to change, I swear. I've
dumped fried products and fattening desserts and I even eat regular
salads with fat-free dressing. My body's taking in so much lettuce now
that it doesn't even digest all the way. I see these leaves floating in
the toilet bowl and know I must be doing a good thing. But that doesn't
stop my throat from being sore. Maybe something's wrong with my
immune system. That's the last time I share a needle with Courtney
Love...

        But then came the adding of insult to injury last night when
a dull pain in my right ear slowly escalated over a period of hours
until I finally realized I was experiencing an earache. The last time I
had one of those I didn't even know how to read. And of course my mom
was there to stay up the entire night with a crying kid. She wrapped a
few towels around an iron and held it to my ear. It sounds like
something out of the Psycho's Book of Home Remedies, but it works,
probably because with the outside of your ear on fire you completely
forget about the earache. Almost 15 years later, here I was in the same
situation, 100 miles from home, almost halfway through college,
living on my own. I had no iron and I sure wasn't going to put my ear
on the radiator, so what did I do? I picked up the phone and called my
mom.

        By then, I hadn't slept for three nights and was convinced I
was on my deathbed. I know next to nothing about illnesses because
I've never had them. So I figured with an earache added in, my cold
from hell was probably a sign of something more serious. I was
thinking pneumonia, tuberculosis, mono... And wouldn't that have
been the ultimate irony? Someone without a girlfriend being stricken
with the kissing disease right before Valentine's Day? I was delirious
already from being awake 62 consecutive hours, the cold virus had
weakened me and now my ear was throbbing. So I don't remember
anything from my phone conversation. All I remember was laying in
bed about an hour later, wondering how I'd ever get to sleep with my
ear in so much pain, and then the pain suddenly ceased. For about five
seconds, then started back in full force. I broke into maniacal laughter
at the thought that the bacteria had to bend down and tie its shoe
before it could resume its attack on my eardrum. It seemed funny at
the time...

        Somehow I did make it through the night, and by the time I
woke up yesterday, the other ear was hurting instead. I went through
six hours of classes until I finally stopped by the Student Health
Center. I'd heard the horror stories about campus clinics -- you know,
tell them you have a fever and they take out your appendix -- but until
yesterday I'd never set foot in there. Then again, I've never needed
free condoms, but with the ears and the throat and the nose all acting
up at the same time, I decided it wouldn't hurt to see someone who knows
what the difference is between yellow and green phlegm.

        It's cold and flu season, of course, so they immediately gave
me a form to check off what symptoms I had. This was child's play.
I went down the list -- check, check, check -- with not a blank space
remaining, not even the one about bloody boogers. Now they knew
I was no ordinary sneezes and sniffles kid, and when I told the nurse
about my ongoing earaches, she took a look for herself. "Oh," she said
in a concerned tone. "Helga, look at this." So Helga snuck a peek at
the earscope. "Oh," Helga said in a concerned tone. The first nurse
continued, "Yeah, we're gonna have to see you right away."

        So I went into another room, filled out another form and
waited to see another nurse. She came in with a medical student,
both looked in my ear, and both said "Oh" in the same concerned tone.
"WHAT IS IT?!?!" I just about yelled, and they said it was about the
worst ear infection they'd ever seen... but 30 pills of this generic
antibiotic should take care of it. Then they looked at my throat. They
were going to use a tongue depressor, but I told them if they wanted
to depress my tongue they'd tell it that it would never be in Neve
Campbell's mouth. Finally they brought out a brown bag filled with
sample packets of painkillers and decongestants, slipping it to me
like they were stolen. I was waiting for a hushed offer, "Wanna buy
a stethoscope? Never used..."

        Before I left, they had to get another look at that ear. "I wish
we had a camera here," one of them said. "This diseased ear belongs in
a textbook." They compensated for their lack of a camera by having
every med student in the building file by, one by one, and stare into my
right ear. Seriously. I felt like the Elephant Man all of a sudden, and
figured if everyone was going to get a scientific thrill looking at my
pained ear, I might as well charge them, or at least demand a name-
brand antibiotic. Then I realized I could thank my lucky stars I'm not
dying after all. I just have textbook ear infection and a mutant cold
virus. And there just might be a colon scrub in my near future.

Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions

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                                Submitted by the author:  Andrew Hicks