A few whacks of self-medication proving futile in relieving me of the frequent itch and pain in my left ear, I resorted to approaching an aurist.
It was a sunny Sunday morning when walking along the road leading to the town, a signboard displaying the name and consultation hours of an ear specialist espied me. Soon I noted down the details in a piece of paper and went my way. The very next day I got at the clinic well in time and sat on a backless bench in the verandah. After a few minutes, a burly guy emerged from a staircase in front of me and noted down my name and age in a slender notebook.
After about twenty minutes a smart, young man appearing to be a doctor from his looks and brisk movements into each of the rooms in the clinic called me by my name. The one and only patient in that gloaming hour, I got into the room and sat on a stool beside the doctor. When asked what my ailment was, I told him I often felt itchy inside my left ear. As I tilted my pate aside to let him look into it, he focused a small torchlight into my lug, inserted a thin metal rod——may be, one of his instruments——and began gently rotating it without giving me even a hint of the pain the action would cause. Unable to bear the ache I winced tilting my pate a little more. “Hey! What are you doing” he asked me in a tad peevish manner. “I felt quite prickly and painful” I replied. Soon withdrawing the instrument from my ear, he drew my attention to the nubbin of cerumen sticking to it. No sooner had I taken a look at it than he unscrupulously rubbed it on my shirtsleeve. Stifling a sharp retort, I asked him for the prescription. Within seconds, he handed it to me the same that bore the names of some tablets scribbled in it. My painstaking intake of the tablets he had prescribed relieved me of the ailment in a couple of days but the scar left in my heart by the action of rubbing the earwax on my shirtsleeve has been lingering in my memory albeit that he did it over a decade ago.
A few years later, almost the same sort of ailment began affecting my right ear. I decided to approach the same physician, notwithstanding his unthinking action of smearing the earwax on my shirtsleeve when there were bundles of cotton rolls in his room at that time. One day, at a late vespertine hour, I visited the same clinic found located elsewhere. As I entered the room when called in, the same doctor recognizing me in a trice asked me to take my seat and come out with my ailment. As I tilted my head exposing my right ear, he focused a small torch into it as before but stopped short of inserting the thin metal rod unlike on the previous occasion probably recollecting the measure of pain I had suffered. This time, he recommended only an ear lotion advising me to use it for a few days. With a smile I left the clinic thanking him and heaving an alto-relievo.
