Beeswax

The members of our household are obsessed with a variety of things.  Heather loves books, especially anything having to do with sociology or how people interact.  If there's dark chocolate in the house, I will find it (the darker, the better - I can down 73% like it's nothing, but the 85% I savor).  Mattie loves shoes and her footy pajamas.  If she finds either one, she will carry them around until she finds someone and tries to get us to help her get them on.  Perhaps the strangest obsession is Liliana with her ears.  She loves having people look into them.

Now, having my own otoscope (the doctorly device to look in someone's ears, which she knows by name), she loves having me look into them to find "beeswax", which is what she's convinced grows in there.  A couple years ago, I took her to school and she got paid (quite well, at that!) to have medical students practice a child exam (listening to the heart, lungs, reflexes, and, most importantly, looking into the ears and throat.  Liliana was wonderful and enjoyed having the med students look into her ears.

But, her obsession extends beyond that.  A few months ago, her ears were impacted with "beeswax".  Being the resourceful medical student who had just been trained to irrigate ears, I brought home a 50cc syringe and an IV catheter and flushed her ears out with a mixture of warm water and hydrogen peroxide.  It worked like a charm!  After a few flushes in each ear, out popped the huge chunks of earwax.  I decided not to gross everyone out by posting the pictures.  During the whole procedure, Liliana sat quite still, enjoying every moment of it, even laughing while the water squirted in her ear!  Yesterday, she even wanted me to check in her ears to see if there was any ear wax in there for me to squirt out.  Truly, our obsessions drive us to madness!