I emailed Ti Ti, my granddaughter, who lives in Bangkok, Thailand, a few days ago. It was one of my emails with a litany of bullet points. One of them had to do with my catching a cold last month. Hey, I’ve been on my journey down the yellow brick road of life for 82 years and have had my share of colds. They come one day, are gone with the wind a couple of days later, and are hardly noticed. I can’t recall the last time I had a cold. Nevertheless, I’ll never forget this one.

This cold came, but I didn’t notice it, which might have irked my cold. My cold was like Trump. My cold and Trump want to be the center of attention, and both are into retribution. It caught my attention when it spread to my right ear. The fluid in my middle ear, which resulted from my cold, couldn’t drain through my eustachian tube.

A cross-section of the ear

I have had problems with hearing before. However, those problems with hearing were exacerbated due to the drainage issue. Everything I heard or said sounded like there was a bucket over my head. It was extremely difficult to understand what was said to me. I couldn’t differentiate words spoken to me; everything was muffled.

I finally got an appointment with an ENT doctor. Essentially, it wasn’t difficult for him to determine the issue and how to resolve it. What my ENT wanted to do was to put a tube in my eardrum, which would allow the fluid to drain out of my ear.

This is a video of the procedure on another patient, but it is precisely what my ENT did. He put a white substance at the bottom of my eardrum. It has two purposes. The white substance is a topical anesthesia to numb the pain, and it also is a type of glue to avoid unnecessarily making the incision in the eardrum larger than necessary.

My ENT allowed the anesthesia and glue to settle for probably 10 minutes. Then, he made a small incision at the bottom of the eardrum.

The next stage is to take an instrument to suck the fluid out of the middle ear. I don’t know whether the fluid was as thick as the patient in the video. However, I have never heard a louder sound as the drainage was in the process of removing the liquid. I asked my ENT how much he removed from my middle ear. He said that it wasn’t very much, but it sounded like it was at least a quart or more. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.

What the ENT in the video didn’t do, which my doctor did, was to insert a drainage tube into the incision. The tube will allow some additional fluid to drain out of the ear. During the next few days, I am unsure if I heard some fluid slowly draining out of my ear or whether the sound was due to the lessening pressure in the middle ear. Personally, my right ear is back to near normal.

In my email to Ti Ti, I told her not to mention my auditory dilemma to Moh Moh, her mother. After I had my tarsal tunnel operation, there were several months of having to wear a cast on my lower leg and foot. A removable walking cast replaced that for another couple of months. This video is before the walking cast.

When Moh Moh read about my surgery, she wanted to take the first plane from Inle Lake to Crown Point and be my nurse. She had to settle for daily reports regarding my progress.

Maybe when Moh Moh reads this essay, she will try again to get a diversity visa for the family. She and Ko Ko, her husband, and Ti Ti’s two younger sisters could care for Ailing Allen. I promise I will make Bananas Bo Bo Gyi for them if they arrive before seeing my ENT again in a week. This is a video of me preparing my spécialité for my family on New Year's Eve several years ago.

Next week, my ENT will repeat that procedure. I hope that my family in Myanmar can get her by the 25^th.

This video is the complete video of draining the inner ear.