A doctor burst my eardrum while I was abroad over new year. He burst it whilst irrigating my ear, which was blocked from swimming. He burst it and instantly I yelled out loud with the pain. I yelled and told him ‘you have just burst my ear drum!’. He replied, through a female assistant who translated, ‘No, I have not. The pain you are experiencing is normal after putting water in an ear to clear it out. In this country’, he said, ‘we use a metal instrument that makes a different sound to the sound you are used to hearing when someone irrigates you ear. The explosion you heard, followed by the pain you felt, is nothing.’ ‘But there is blood coming out of my ear’ I told him. ‘The blood on your tissue is not blood, it is wax.’ he replied.
The pain was quite intense at this point, but I allowed the doctor to continue to irrigate my now burst left ear drum with more water (he did not check to see whether what I said was true, he was not curious about any damage he might have done) and then to do the same to my right ear (whose drum he did not burst, in which the metal did not make the same explosive sound).
I left, knowing what this man had just done, knowing the harm he had caused, offering to pay for his services on the way out.
I bled from my ear for two days, I developed an inner ear infection, I had to postpone my return flights because it was too dangerous to fly. I’m still pretty deaf in the injured ear, there is a constant hissing white noise that I hear.
I have been very curious about this experience since it happened two weeks ago. I do not have much issue with the fact this doctor burst my ear drum. It is a thin membrane, it may have been weak, it is a risk of the procedure he performed. What I am curious about is how both he and I chose to respond. He chose to gaslight me. He chose to tell me that what had clearly happened, had not. He chose to tell me that what I was experiencing was not what it clearly was. Was his response a way of assuaging a guilt he felt, a knee-jerk form of protection, or did he truly not believe there was any truth in my words?
I am even more curious about the fact that I did not call him out on his lies. There was something about the power dynamic in that room that caused me to fawn. To remain polite and manageable. The female assistant also knew what he had done, I saw it in her eyes, but neither of us stood up to the doctor in that moment, we allowed him weave his deceit, we accepted that the red blood on my tissue was not blood, but wax.
On return visits to the clinic with my now infected ear, I saw two other male doctors. The original doctor was always in the room, as was the female translator. At no point did I say to either of these new doctors – I know what this man did. I know he caused this injury. I know that the infection and the pain and the blood (it was blood) are his doing. I allowed them instead to examine me and hand me medication and tell me to cancel my flights.
I am deeply curious about this. What stopped me speaking to these men in the examination room? What stopped me advocating for myself?
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