An brusque abode for pathogens (Last Plane to the Doctor's Office)

[jm]

from here:

http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com/forums/index.php?topic=11657.475

[heather]

I think I'm getting an ear infection. A pal suggested sticking a fresh clove of peeled garlic all up in my ear parts. It worked for a couple days, but my ear is all achey and icky again. Any longer lasting suggestions? Please note that I am: unemployed, poor, uninsured, poor

[FreddyKnuckles]

I got a couple of those in college. The first one I got the meds for and then after that I just let it play out. If you can manage the pain it'll just go away eventually.

Internet says you can press a warm water bottle against it.
Seek immediate medical attention for high fever, severe pain, or other signs of complications.

[clare]

You mean a middle ear infection, right, behind your ear-drum? Heat, lying with the affected ear uppermost, saline nasal sprays, steam inhalation, neti pot are all good. Yeah, you don't want to get a really high fever, or a burst eardrum particularly, but at least if your eardrum bursts the infection will clear pretty fast. The bloke is paranoid about ear infections cos there's a family story about some uncle who had an earache and went home and died from meningitis, so you don't want that to happen either. If you get a fever or a headache, take yourself to the ER. Ear infections can take up to a week to sort themselves out apparently (my dr told me once when I took the big boy in, that anti-biotics only speed the healing by about half a day, so she wouldn't usually prescribe them unless it was really severe and not showing signs of fixing itself). good luck.

[heather]

thanks dudes!! i'm gonna try the steam and a warm compress. xo

[FreddyKnuckles]

There was also some thing about baking an onion and then putting it in a jar and putting your ear over the jar hole. I cannot recommend this

[RoyBiggins]

man my last ear infection got to the inner ear and I kept falling down like a baby giraffe learning to walk.  They ended up giving me heavy duty anti motion sickness meds.

[nonotyet]

This is less a question, more of a complaint, because the answer is GO TO THE FUCKING DOCTOR:

I have really terrible calluses on both of my feet, but the right one especially because I distribute weight on the foot differently. I have started getting cuts on the right foot periodically in the area where the callus is, and I think it is not so much a cut as the callus is splitting open. (Do calluses split? I thought the existence of them meant that it is building up dead skin for protection of the foot.) Either way I do not like it. I am putting liquid bandage on it and it hurts like a motherfucker but bandaging it doesn't seem to work because it is on an inconvenient place on the edge of the foot and bandages keep falling off, and today is casual Friday and I am forced to wear thigh-high hooker Dr. Scholl's boots and a pencil skirt because the boots are the only thing that make my foot feel okay and duh you can't wear thigh-high boots with anything but skirts.
This last part may be less of a legitimate thing to complain about, actually.     

[jm]

OK, is there such a thing as hives that don't itch?  I've been getting a few isolated large bumps that look like mosquito bites but don't really itch, or itch for a period of less than five minutes and then don't itch at all anymore.  And by isolated, I mean I get like one on one arm near the elbow, and one on one arm halfway between the elbow and the shoulder.  This is inconsistent with my experience with things like mosquito (which are itchy where these are not) and bedbug bites (which are very itchy for a long time, are smaller than these, and usually occur more than one at a time, and occur in a place that is exposed at night - I've been sleeping with clothes on recently, which would mean that a bedbug would have had to get into my clothing, travel past a lot of very bite-able skin, and decide to just bite me once).

I guess I just sort of assume that hives would be itchier and more numerous, but who knows.

I should add that, when the temperature and humidity change significantly (especially going from humid -> dry), I get patches of dry itchiness around my elbows and knees and sometimes knuckles and sometimes the backs of my legs, almost eczemaish, but this isn't even like that.

[Maaik]

I KEEP READING THIS TRHEAD TITLE AS "BRUSQUE ADOBO" AND I AM READY FOR AN ANGRY LUNCH.

[davy]

DID SOMEOBDY SAY ABOBO?

[Little Sixes Little Nines]

I COULD GO FOR SOME CREPES-A-GO-GO ITS JUST ACORSS THE ROAD FROM ME

[clare]

NNY, it's a summer thing, in my experience. Moisturise and exfoliate. It's awful.

[Em]

Anyone know any tricks for getting a stuck ring off your finger besides soap and water, oil, windex, or pure ammonia? It was a relative's ring and I was feeling sentimental this morning, but I couldn't decide whether it was too much, so I took it off, and then put it on, and then took it back off, and then put it back on again and it seemed to fit fine, if a tad snugly. Should I just wait until morning and see if I'm maybe retaining less water in my hands then? If it still doesn't come off, what the hell happens?

[jess]

First off, get your hand really cold. Ice it or something, and elevate it, and that may be enough, since your hand will shrink a bit when it's cold. Then I'd use something greasy or lube, if soap and water alone don't work. I don't see how ammonia would help, but I've never tried it...

[Em]

First off, get your hand really cold. Ice it or something, and elevate it, and that may be enough, since your hand will shrink a bit when it's cold. Then I'd use something greasy or lube, if soap and water alone don't work. I don't see how ammonia would help, but I've never tried it...

Will try this. But won't the cold temperature cause the metal of the ring to shrink as well? (The ammonia was a suggestion from my mother, who reasoned that since ammonia is the ingredient in windex that makes that substance effective for this purpose, maybe plain old ammonia would work even better. I dunno.)

[jess]

No, the metal is way less prone to shrinkage than your flesh. Trust me—I have metal rings that fit snugly in the summer that I have to be careful with during the winter because they almost fall off (I tend to not wear gloves much).

[Em]

No, the metal is way less prone to shrinkage than your flesh. Trust me—I have metal rings that fit snugly in the summer that I have to be careful with during the winter because they almost fall off (I tend to not wear gloves much).

Okay, cool. Thanks.

[Em]

Update: the cold plus elevation thing didn't work. I tried a trick involving dental floss that I read about on the internet, and that didn't work either. So, I'm going to the jeweler near my work when it opens this morning to see if they'll cut it off. I believe this method will be effective.

[jess]

Wow, that must be really jammed on there—never had that not work with a ring. I had to cut a bracelet off once, but in that case the issue was that I had been eyeing it in this jade shop in Beijing and the sales woman did this thing with a plastic bag to force it on my hand assuring me it was fine. I didn't even really want it that much, but for whatever reason, I bought it, only to find out when I returned to my hotel, there was no way to remove it, because the bones in my hand were a major obstacle when the direction was reversed. I tried everything imaginable when I got home, and then decided to just wear it for a while, which ended up being at least a year, until I got sick of it. Then, when at a party with some former boy scout friends, I asked them to figure out how to remove it, and thanks to some heavy tools, we did it, with the bracelet in several pieces and only a small scratch on me.

[Greg Nog]

Try some WD-40!

[Em]

Jess, that's quite a long time to wear a bracelet! I hope it was pretty!

[jess]

It was—just a simple solid red jade bangle, and the jade was pretty. I had actually gotten very fond of it, hence my not removing it, but then pretty sick of it just from wearing it all the time by the end.

[The_Tourist]

people i know are all giving each other scabies. i'm scared.

[heather]

ewwwwww! a dude the bf knows once stayed at his house and had scabies. didn't think to mention it to the bf's gf at the time, who HAD A BABY INSIDE OF HER. that dude totally had scabies.