Leave the swimmer's ear at home...

Somehow, by swimming 3 times in the past 6 days, I have managed to get an ear infection. Swimmer’s ear or just a plain old, my ear hurts and I can’ t sleep ear infection. And I am absolutely pathetic. I called my mom at 7am and cried, I woke up throughout the night, went to Walgreen’s the morning and bought drops, called doctors because the drops did squat, and have now convinced Stacey, a true American hero, to take me to a clinic at a CVS near her house after work. Through this, I’ve realized something that may seem like a paradox to you.

I have an incredibly low threshold for pain.

How can that be, you may ask, when you’re training for a triathlon? Don’t I know that I will endure scrapes and bruises and aches and pains and stretched out limbs and twisted ankles and bike crashes? Well yes, I do know that, and this, for some odd reason, doesn’t faze me a bit. I can give blood without batting an eye and I’ll subject myself to hour-long cycling classes at the gym for fun. I’ll run through a cramp and even endure the agony of a yoga class. But when it comes to things like stomach aches (not brought on by strenuous activity), back pain (brought on by yoga, but lasting longer than the class), and apparently ear aches, I turn into a sniffling, whining, bring me juice and toast, immature child. I guess I can only handle pain that I control? Wow, that sounds sadomasochistic!

But really, isn’t there something to be said for that? Don’t you think we are able to handle more if we’re inflicting it on ourselves? I think there’s definitely a difference between good pain and bad pain. And maybe crashing my bike will be bad pain, but it will be inflicted through the attempt to improve my biking skills, therefore making it a somewhat “neutral” pain in my book.

I think another part of it is simply that I don’t get sick very often. I NEVER vomit (I can go years, even have gone a decade…c’mon I only have so many decades to call my own so far), my colds last about 3-4 days tops, and I don’t remember the last time that I was truly bedridden. The worst things that have happened to me in the past 5 years have been the common cold, exhaustion, and the one time that I cut my hand open and had to get stitches. BOY was I hysterical then!! In all fairness, I had chunks of glass in my hand and waited almost 12 hours before going to a doctor…but it really wasn’t that bad. Oh and there’s the time I slammed my finger in a car door and had to have the blood drained out of my fingernail. Fun. But I’ve never had to go to the emergency room (for me anyway) and I’ve never had a medical emergency. So my threshold for this kind of pain is pathetically low and I long for my mom to come take care of me. Or sleeping pills to knock me out. Either/or. Bring on the extreme muscular breakdown that a triathlon will bring…but leave the swimmer’s ear at home.