Vestibular Residence

My doctor took a moment to consider his examination and then, as he confidently popped the sterilized veneer from the top of the otoscope thing-a-ma-bobber, he disclosed his diagnosis, “you have a virus in your ear.”

Now, I was immediately inclined to ask that he might repeat himself because I must have somehow muddled and/or misinterpreted this diagnosis due to what he would later refer to as “a significant amount of congestion and inflammation” in my right ear or what I began to acutely refer to as: why does the room keep spinning? (insert nausea here)

So I asked him, “I’m sorry, could you repeat that. I have what?”
So he repeated himself, only this time slightly louder, “I say, you have a virus… in your ear.”

Consider the two distinct responses that popped into my head:

1. Defensive indignation in that I could embrace my inner 8-year old child and respond with the exceedingly infantile show stopper known as the “I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I” Freudian projection, as clearly my lexicon of “your mama’s so fat” one-liners would never suffice in such a clinical setting.

“Oh yeah doctor? Well….well you have a virus in your ear! So there!” wherein any unflappable physician should promptly respond with “that may be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that you have a virus in your ear.”


2. Thoughts of extrication, extraction and removal of the virus in that one might consider that when it is revealed that one has a virus in one’s ear, an opportunity to remove said virus from one’s ear would soon contrarily present itself as it could be argued that what goes in, must come out.

A few examples of what goes in, must come out:

-When one has a fly in one’s soup one can beckon the server to fish it out and then promptly storm out in a disgruntled huff—that is, storm out the door from which they came in.

-One can put tropical fish into one’s 30-gallon tank in an effort to promote personal tranquility; however much to their dismay the fish can then be taken out of the tank and quickly left to squander about in a desiccated state of decomposition.

-An individual can put 10W-40 into the engine of their 1980 black Chevy Monza 4x4, however I assure you, it will systematically leak out if you’re driving the one I used to own.

-An individual can jam an index finger into their nose, but they’re bound to pull it out sooner or later; how else would they be able to flick the coagulated bugger at their sibling thereby inciting a fratricidal fury for custodial Sunday.

I suppose there are a couple of exceptions to my what goes in, must come out rationale.

For example, if you’re at a wake and you overhear some insensitive yenta babbling on about how “Teddy wouldn’t quit smoking right up until the end and so it was the congestive heart failure that finally did Teddy in,” well then the odds are that once the vessel formerly known as Teddy is peacefully placed into his Sarcophagus, he will in all probability not be coming out for cig by the dumpster anytime soon.

Yes, but jenji you have a virus in your ear. Precisely, and I’m thankful to have an answer as to what was/is causing my symptoms, however I still found/find myself perplexed by the phraseology of said diagnosis.

What I really wanted to say to the doctor was, “What do you mean I have a virus in my ear? Surely you mean to say that I have caught a virus or that a virus is causing these symptoms and my condition.”

Or how about he went ahead, took a gamble and allowed for a clinical diagnosis, wherein he could have informed me that I had vestibular neuritis: a condition caused by a viral infection of the vestibular nerve, which can in turn cause the excessive vertigo and nausea that I had/have been experiencing, as well as the spontaneous nystagmus associated with lying down on my right side in bed. At least I could have Googled that explanation.

But no, he chose to embrace the perilous, enigmatic virus in your ear and all of its incendiary implications in lieu of the vestibular neuritis.

…you have a virus in your ear.

I don’t believe it would be too farfetched for me to maintain that I have a significantly bent mind, and when you inform a bent mind that they have a virus in their ear, that bent mind will undoubtedly conjure up one image: of a strapping Ricardo Montalbán jamming a gigantic Ceti eel larvae into Commander Chekov’s ear in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Good God man, don’t inform someone they have something in a particular orifice of their body if there isn’t some possibility that you can coax whatever it is that’s in there out in the very near future.







Wrath of Khan

jenji, enough with the semantics.
You know what, you're right.

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But I’m just sayin’, when my mother had a seizure a few years ago the distracted emergency physician didn’t say to me, “your mother had a seizure in her brain.” No sir, in fact he said, “your mother had a seizure, I’ll explain more later, it’s mac n cheese Friday downstairs,” wherein I assume he headed downstairs in to the cafeteria to pack his insensitive face with what is apparently phenomenal mac n cheese and then afterward, came on out to finally explain more later. You see, he was going to head in to the cafeteria and further, implied that at some point he would be coming back out to speak with me, so that makes perfect get in, get out sense.

When I saw a contemporary of mine at an opening wearing a cast on his leg I asked, “what happened to your leg?” he responded, “I broke my ankle.” What he didn’t say was “I have a broken a bone in my leg,” for that might imply that he could take the break out in some fashion.

Nor did he say, “similar to the injury that the incomparable Frida Kahlo suffered in her right leg, I have an oblique fracture of the fibula in my right leg, however my particular injury is much more minimalistic in nature in that mine didn’t shatter along the entire column of the leg” for if he had said that, which would have been entirely plausible given my past experience with artistic and/or intellectual symposiums, well then I probably would have told him that he was a tiresome, smug pedantic who doesn’t deserve neither my sympathy, nor my attention because I’m not looking to get covertly dragged into a pretentious debate about whether or not I consider Frida Kahlo’s work to be anti-conformist in nature; in fact, I had been previously fixated on the sophisticated cheese tray behind him; that was until he gimped his way across my sightline and so now I had no other choice but to ask him what the fuck was wrong with his leg.

What I should have said to the doctor was “I have a virus in my ear? Okay, then how can we get it out?” wherein he more than likely would have responded, “we can’t get it out, your insurance won’t cover the procedure.” Now that would have made perfect get in, get out sense, however that wasn’t what transpired.

In fact it’s simple: I have a virus in my ear that’s intermittently wreaking havoc, and luckily it doesn’t require extraction or invasive attention, however given my doctor’s predilection for ominous diagnoses, he has graciously afforded me with a far more indeterminate prognosis for said diagnosis: “the virus will go away on its own,” wherein he threw a prescription at me for anti-emetic, anti-vertigo pills.

I'm going to go ahead and interpret “the virus will go away on its own,” as it'll go ahead and come out on its own in an effort to thwart my bent mind, as the thought of a virulent intruder riding along a one-way vestibular concourse and taking up residence within my noggin overwhelms me with an imperative need to go out and buy wire hangers and rubbing alcohol.

jenji