I Shouldn't Be Out On My Own When I'm Ill, I Suspect

Ear infections are horrible. The cold, as well as settling on my chest and giving me a racking cough, has led to a secondary ear infection: a middle-ear infection, no less. Why? I have assessment to mark!

Plus, driving with a raging cold and a burgeoning ear infection is not fun. Driving with a raging cold and a burgeoning ear infection when it’s also pouring with rain is even less fun.

I also find it terribly difficult to concentrate when I’m ill.

When the woman in the chemist recommended that I take some kind of probiotic in conjunction with the antibiotics, to prevent all sorts of unfortunate side effects that I won’t go into here because they’re actually quite horrible, I paid no attention whatsoever.

Partly, it was because she was recommending Inner-health Plus, and I despise their advertising almost as much as I despise Lynx advertising.

(No, that’s not fair: I despise Inner-health Plus advertising in the same way in which I despise Dodo Internet advertising. Seriously, Inner-health Plus, if you’re going to use a seesaw to show how your product “restores balance,” your last shot probably shouldn’t show all the weight resting on one side of the seesaw, you know? And Dodo? The slogan “Internet that flies” is really stupid when your company is named after a famously flightless bird.)

Partly, this was because the illness and the increasing pain in my ear had made me spacey—and the increasing pressure of the infection meant I could only really hear out of one ear, anyway.

But mostly it was because I was suddenly gripped by a terrible fear that “probiotics” and “antibiotics” might just cancel each other out, and I’d be left with this ear infection forever.

See, having someone else take you to the doctor’s isn’t just to stop you from running over pedestrians.