How I ended up in the ER

It's not quite as dramatic as it sounds. For the past couple of days I've had a feeling like something has lodged in my right ear, and it's been getting worse. It's only painful if I do something that alters the blood pressure, like bending down but otherwise it's just bloody annoying.

Monday night I had problems getting to sleep over it, so I asked the night clerk at Motel 6, and he directed me to something called Medcenter One, in downtown Bismarck. I went down there and had to give some info and sign some papers, but nothing much different from what I would have done back home.

I was led in to a room where a nurse looked into my ears with some kind of contraption. I made a joke about her being able to see clear through, which got a laugh from the very cute attending doctor, who then unfortunately went some other place (I swear, this girl could have had a starring role on Scrubs). Instead another doc came and looked into my ear and said it was full of fluids and that I had an infection.

He was surprised when he heard I was from Norway, but then took off his ID and showed it to me and said "what do you think of that?". His last name was Haslestad; as Norwegian a name as you can imagine, and he told me he was 4th or 5th generation. I swear, the Dakotas are crawling with us people. He then wrote me two prescriptions and told me I could get them filled at the hospital pharmacy.

The only thing I had to pay for then and there was the medication, which ran me a grand total of $30. Everybody I met, from the nurse at the ER reception to the pharmacist who gave me my meds were thoroughly nice and professional. I'm now basically on antibiotics and some anticongestion drug for a week. The ear is still annoying me but now that I know what it is, I no longer feel a desperate urge to stab myself with a pencil or anything, so in that respect one might say I'm already feeling better...