Ear trouble.

This was taken in the spring of 2007. Elisabeth was almost 4.5 years old.

Last night, the 8 year old Elisabeth came downstairs and said that her left ear hurt when she laid on it. Elisabeth is not a complainer by any means, so we got a flashlight and looked in it to see if it was red or swollen. We saw a buildup of wax way down in the canal. I told her I'd make an appointment in the morning, that the doctor had a special scoop to get excessive ear wax out of ears and to sleep on the other side. She was happy and went off to bed.

We get to her doctor appointment and the doctor goes to look in her ear and immediately sees the build up but says, "I don't think that's wax." Ok. So, the doctor has Elisabeth lay down and she gets this little tool that looks like a stick with the smallest little loop on the end. She tells Elisabeth that she's just going to try to scoop it out. As soon as the scoop goes into Elisabeth's ear, she starts steadily screaming, "Ow! Owowowowowowow!" louder and louder. The doctor looks up at me and says, "I can't get this out. I'm going to get a nurse who is great at getting things out of ears to come and spray some water and hydrogen peroxide mixture into it and see if she can get it out." I ask if she knows what it is. "It looks like a bean."

Now is where I need to tell you a story. When Ebeth was 4.5 years old, she was in daycare at The Growing Place in Dekalb. One day she came home saying she had stuck a bean in her ear. She was playing during naptime and there were pinto beans from the sensory table near her cot. She stuck one bean in her right ear, but it kept falling out. She stuck a different bean in her left ear and pushed it in and it didn't fall out. We checked her ear and didn't see anything. We talked about not putting things in her ear and said that it wasn't in there anymore and went about our business.

For four years, Elisabeth has brought up this story about the bean that is still in her ear. She'd say how sometimes she could feel it when she itched her ear. She was always insistent that it had never fallen out...

When the nurse came in with the water to get the thing lodged in Ebeth's ear, she asked me to sit next to Elisabeth and put my arm around her so I could hold the cup to catch the water and the object in the ear. She then whispered very softly, "You're going to need to restrain her."

As soon as the nurse started squirting Elisabeth's ear with the stream of water and hydrogen peroxide, my very mellow eldest daughter started screaming like I haven't heard her scream before. She was crying and trying to run from the room. She was screaming, "Stop! Leave me alone! Quit hurting me! I want to go home!" I was holding her with everything I had, whispering to her that it was almost over. I was sobbing. Her crying reminded me of when she was an infant and had to have her heels pricked for jaundice. She was a week old and I felt helpless watching my child cry from pain with my only way of comforting her being hugs and crying whispers. That was how Elisabeth cried today.

While I was holding her, Elisabeth suddenly cried out, "It's not funny!" Confused, I looked at the nurse who told Elisabeth, "Honey, your momma's not laughing, sweetie, she's crying. Momma's cry when their babies cry." Elisabeth looked at me, her mother who almost never cries, for a second before focusing again on her pain.

After 20 minutes of squirting water and using the tool to try to scoop it out, the nurse was able to dislodge...a pinto bean. A pinto bean that had been in Elisabeth's ear canal for four years. A pinto bean that had finally started falling apart in Elisabeth's ear and started causing her some mild discomfort.

I was completely appalled and kept saying, "But, it's been in there for FOUR YEARS!" The nurse said that she's seen weirder things come out of ears. I decided not to ask what those weirder things were.

Elisabeth will have to have ear drops in her ears for 5 days to help kill anything the bean may have left inside. She doesn't feel like she can hear any better, but said her ear is sore from getting the crap beat out of it.

While we sat and waited for her prescription number to be called, Elisabeth calmly said, "I told you I had a bean in my ear."

Yes, she did. She'd told me that for four solid years. I believe I've apologized a million times today.

Definitely a day I will never forget.