Bloody Ear

This is a Hawaii story, and it must be told, though some of you may cancel your travel plans as a result.

Thursday morning, during family scripture study, I noticed that Sam's ear was full of dried blood. The distant memory of Sam coming down from the attic (his chosen sleeping quarters these days) with an ear throbbing with pain came back to me. Although I was not fully conscious, I was able to drug my child and send him back up to bed. When I saw the blood, I was sure that his ear drum had burst, that his ear tube had come out, that he had a major infection . . . all because I forgot to put his ear plugs in the other night when he took a bath. Feeling all kinds of motherly guilt, I knew I had to call it in. As is often the case these days, there was no school for the kids. I took Sam to the ENT in Honolulu to get him checked out. She cleaned out the ear and then looked in to see that the ear drum and tubes were fine. The problem, she said, was in the tube leading to the ear drum. It looked as though something had irritated him or BIT him way down in his ear canal, causing a blood blister that had popped. I'm not sure how she constructed that detailed story from what she described as "a swelling in the canal," but she seemed convinced that a bug had crawled all the way down and caused the bloody ear. And I have all sorts of phobias now about bugs in the ear. It's like a Star Trek movie in our own home. No more sleeping in the attic! And I might be wearing ear plugs to bed from now on.