November 13, 2007: Neptune’s Revenge or Could you speak a little louder? I’ve got a banana in my ear…

Or at least, that’s what it feels like. After barely a week of diving, I managed to trap a miserable little plankton in my ear, and it cooked up overnight into one hell of an infection. I tried to wait it out, but by the second day I knew it was too much for eardrops and paracetamol alone. So of I went to the recompression chamber in Marsa Alam, a one and a half hour drive away (there’s a hospital here in El Quseir, but it is ill-advised to avail of its services), where the doctor was waiting for me. (Despite everything else I may have to say about the dive centre and it’s management, I was really impressed at how quickly they arranged for medical care for me)

For the record, on a pain scale of 1-10, I was already sitting at around an 8, with painkillers. So when the doctor took a long strip of gauze, coated it with antibiotic cream and jammed it deep into my ear canal with a pair of blunt scissors, it really fucking hurt. (If you’re a Gillis, think of this as about equal to taking a meat thermometer and ramming it into your ear with a ballpine hammer. Man, I hate it when that happens!) When he was finished he patted me on the shoulder as if he were a soccer coach and I’d just made a nice pass. Then he prescribed me four different drugs, told me to keep the ear pack in until Thursday and stay out of the water for a week, asked for €25 (staff price; tourists pay €50), accepted C$20 instead (only about €14 but all the cash money I had — I’m completely broke until payday) and sent me on my way.

Of course, for most people an ear infection isn’t a big deal. Once the antibiotics kick in, the pain is mostly gone and you can get back to your regular routine. But it’s counter duty for me for the rest of the week — no diving. (Insert Napoleon Dynamite-esque sigh here.) I hate the counter. Dang it. It’s just so damn boooring. It’s low season so you spend half the day hanging around doing nothing — but you still have to hang around in case someone comes by. And I’m not much use at reception anyway since all the dive centre guests are German and half of them, when they get to the counter and find out they have to speak English, will actually not bother. We’re in Egypt, people! You should be thankful you don’t have to speak Arabic! (All of which begs the question, why did they hire an English-French instructor in the first place?!) Anyway, malesh.