{"id":31019,"date":"2023-10-04T08:38:21","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T12:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=31019"},"modified":"2023-10-04T08:41:26","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T12:41:26","slug":"a-medical-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/04\/a-medical-situation\/","title":{"rendered":"A MEDICAL SITUATION?"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nI told<\/strong><\/span> Alice, \u201cI have a certain medical condition, and you haven\u2019t asked how it\u2019s going?\u201d We were at breakfast. She didn\u2019t seem to understand what I was talking about. \u201cMy ear,” I said. “Remember?” My ear had water in it. My ear was clogged from swimming.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour ear is not a medical situation,\u201d Alice said.<\/p>\n

What was it then? A hardware store? My ear\u00a0 had been clogged for more than a day. (Have you ever had a clogged ear for more than a day? I doubt it. A couple minutes, sure, but not a day-plus.) I called my niece, an E.N.T. in Atlanta. Naturally, she said I should visit an E.N.T.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan I just go to a doc in the box?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

No, I should go to an E.N.T., my niece said. \u201cThey have special tools,\u201d she said. \u201cEven a P.A. there in the office could do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow about if I wait a couple days?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it<\/span> <\/strong>was me, a blocked ear would drive me crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

True. Everything sounded like an echo chamber. I couldn\u2019t hear a lot of stuff, and my clarinet playing was off. But no pain. So maybe this wasn’t a medical situation?<\/p>\n

\"\"

The fixer. Alice Shustick, 1977<\/p><\/div>\n

Alice is a registered nurse and fixes people. She doesn’t appreciate whiners, but she deals with them. She assigns stretches and remedies for a lot of things. (She’s also a retired gym teacher who teaches Pilates, yoga, after-school gym, spinning and senior fitness.) My ear, though\u00a0 . . .<\/p>\n

On Alice’s advice I jumped up and down on one foot, and I tugged on my earlobe. I bought alcohol ear drops at CVS, and even a homeopathic \u201cnatural active ingredients\u201d remedy at Discount Drug Mart. No luck.<\/p>\n

After the second night, I woke up unclogged. I think the alcohol drops helped. My niece said the water in my ear had probably been trapped behind earwax.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m hearing<\/strong><\/span> things better now. I should ask Alice about her pinched nerve this morning. I will. Everything is a “medical situation,” am I right?<\/p>\n

—<\/span><\/p>\n

Yiddishe Cup is celebrating Simchat Torah 6:15 pm Friday at Fairmount Temple, Beachwood, Ohio, and 7:15 pm Saturday at Park Synagogue, Pepper Pipes, Ohio. Free and open to the public.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I told Alice, \u201cI have a certain medical condition, and you haven\u2019t asked how it\u2019s going?\u201d We were at breakfast. She didn\u2019t seem to understand what I was talking about. \u201cMy ear,” I said. “Remember?” My ear had water in it. My ear was clogged from swimming. \u201cYour ear is not a medical situation,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31019"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31044,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31019\/revisions\/31044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}