There’s a huge hole in my pocket.

It’s a bittersweet feeling, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. The Ear, Nose and Throat Consultant whom I paid $95.01 to consult did a series of Specialised Investigations (it says that in my bill) called Pure Tone Audiometry and Tympanometry, two Clinic Procedures called Clearance Ear (Simple) and Syringing and a Surgical Procedure called Nasendoscopy.

The findings: the left ear has wax that needs to be cleared and basically, sucker, you’re ok! If you wish to investigate further, I recommend a CT scan but that will burn a hole way bigger than this one, so ginormous you can fit my Nasendoscopy machine in it. So go home and take some extra strong painkillers if the pain bugs you.

So this entire experience costs me $374.55 just to see some earwax and hear a specialist say three magic words. You. Are. Ok. 

Except that I went through this as the third-person and not the first.

Remember I mentioned the maid has been complaining of a earache for months now? She was pale as sheet on Friday morning and looked like she had cried her eyeballs out the night before. She said there was so much pain in her ears it felt like ten years of bathwater needed to be drained from them (ok, I paraphrased and imagined – all she managed to say with limited vocabulary was “pain. block. heavy. headache”). I decided that the visit to the ENT clinic couldn’t wait till May and if she were to go deaf in her ears, her entire Burmese village would probably come and hunt me down. So I called my lifeline from the hospital – this wonderful Medical Social Worker whom I’ve know all my life, also affectionately know as my mother – to ask if she could help me get an appointment to see a doctor immediately. And then I grabbed the baby and rushed her down to the hospital because the consultant would take a walk-in, like NOW.

After the whole ordeal, she was sobbing away, saying she was really in pain and still is (I just checked) and she was really sorry for everything. I tortured her with my nagging of how she is not my fourth child and why she must learn to take care of herself (she’s from a very well-to-do family and came to work here because ‘Singapore good!’) because she’s probably never taken care of herself a single day of her life (believe me when I say she used to stay at home and do nothing. But to her credit, some sensibility hit her one day and she realised she can’t be a bum forever so she decided to choose the fate of a housemaid! See, I told you she doesn’t have much common sense). I unleashed all my angst about paying so much money to hear the doctor say she was perfectly fine. She seemed grateful that I was willing to pay for her medical fees and asked if she could pay me back. I’m still undecided yet because dragging her to the specialist was totally my idea (she has seen the GP four times!) and it would be terribly unfair to make her pay with her wages although she totally does not need money (so she claims).

Nobody, not even a qualified person, knows what is happening to her ears. But at least I know now it’s not contagious and I did not get a earache from her – the GP said mine was a case of an external ear infection, easily resolved with a round of antibiotics and some eardrops. I joined her in her sobbing nonetheless. Three hundred and seventy bucks could have gotten me lots of new shoes (and soles) for her to vacuum.