Cauliflower Ear

So, I just had the nastiest case of ear madness so far. My father who is an E.R. tech at Vassar Hospital took a look at it after I asked him if he could drain it for me (I've never done it before, and I also don't have needles or syringes with which to do it), and he said "I'm not touching that." I didn't really think that it was that big of a deal, but he convinced me to come into the ER to get a referral to an eye/ear/nose/throat guy. So I did, hoping that they would just drain it there and I wouldn't have to go through the entire referral process and all. When I got the cut on the back of my head, the guy who put the staples in for me was into martial arts; I was hoping to get him as my doctor and have him treat me, but that wasn't the case. I did see him, and he was morbidly impressed. I was hoping that he'd tell the doctor I had that he'd do it himself if my doc wasn't confident about it, but even he told me that he wasn't going to mess with it either.

Anyway, I guess I can understand it...along with all the fluid built up in there, I was loosing circulation. I didn't realize it, but parts of my ear were turning white, and other parts still had bruising. There was swelling that not only wasn't going down, was getting worse. I met my Dad for his birthday dinner on Sunday evening, and met him again when I went into the ER Monday night. He noted that the swelling was worse, and I hadn't been training at all in between. The swelling had increased, and was cutting off circulation. Crap.

So, today I went to the specialist and he wouldn't drain the damn thing either...he sliced my ear open in three different places. He put holes in my ear! He then proceeded to wrap my head in gauze as tightly as he possibly could; he had put some stuff in the cuts he had made so that they wouldn't close and the ear would continue to drain on its own. Great.

Now, I look like a Crypt or Blood who accidentally put his bandana in a bleach load. Obviously I can't train, but he warned me against sweating or showering, as this would make the bandaging fall apart. Also, increasing my heart rate would only bring more crap to my ear that would have to drain as well. This means I can't even go for a run if I want to.

So on Thanksgiving Day, I'll be meeting up with him in the morning to take off the bandages. No training, no running, no nothing. I really don't even want to go outside looking like this, heh. I do have plenty of homework to catch up so I'll be busy, but this really, really sucks.