Except for the parts when they periodically have to say, “You are definitely going to die in a little while,” doctors have a great job. I called my doctor last week (he became my doctor during the call by winning jimski.net’s “Soonest Appointment” contest) and said, “I can’t hear out of my left ear.” They brought me in, gave me an hour and a half of tests, deciphered the results, and said to me, “You can’t hear out of your left ear.” $15.

“What do I do?” asked I. “What’s causing it?”

“Hmmm,” said the doctors, now plural. “Um! Could be a lot of things. Could be a cold. Could be a tumor. Do you have a cold?”

“No.”

“Have you had a cold recently?”

“I have not.”

“Are you sure you don’t feel a cold coming on?”

“Not at all.”

“Do you currently have a cold?”

“Still no.”

“What about now?”

They asked me to come back Tuesday (with $15) so they could see if I had a cold or give me an MRI. Needless to say, I went home and tried very hard to have a cold. I told my wife later about denying my cold three times, and she gently pointed out that I have not inhaled nasally since we met. One short argument about the biological implications of cat ownership later, I began self-medicating with Benadryl and cold medicine.

(I’m not entirely sure how one can go three years without being bothered and/or noticing that one’s nasal passages do not work. I suspect that the answer to that mystery and the secret to a happy life are closely related.)

As Tuesday approached, I unbearably slowly got better. I told the doctors on Tuesday, “I’m hearing a lot better.” They brought me in, gave me an hour and a half of tests, deciphered the results, and said to me, “You’re hearing a lot better.”

Science!

“What can I do to keep myself from ever seeing you again, while remaining able to hear you perfectly well?” asked I.

“Hmmm,” said the Harvard-educated professional. “Um! Would you like some nose steroids?”

“Will nose steroids keep me from going deaf?”

“We’ll see!”

So: one week later, my ear is still ringing, but only a tiny bit; I now snort steroids just to see what happens; and I have learned that it is physically possible to have indigestion so bad that stomach acid backs up into your ears. (Though that did not happen to me. Unless it did. Nobody knows.) I also learned that, when you announce that you have gone deaf, they treat you like an astronaut for an afternoon. They plug you with wires, and they lock you in a little booth and observe you through a tiny window and generate graphs and readouts from whether or not you heard them say “backyard” and “cupcake” clearly through the headphones. (I think that’s where your $15 goes.) You should try it sometime; you learn a lot about yourself. I learned that, even when I’m being tested on something completely out of my control that I have declared myself unable to do, tests still make me feel like I’m back taking trig. Very nerve-wracking. “Damn, I should know this. I should know how to hear the nurse say ‘cupcake.’”