Swimmer's Ear

My weekend consisted of spending 3 hours Friday night in the Spanish ER waiting for a doctor to tell me I had swimmers ear and to give me some ear drops. Here you normally make an appointment with your doctor during the week and they'll see you right away, but if you need to see a doctor at night you have to go to "Urgencias" the equivalent of the ER at the hospital. You tell the secretary what the problem is, then you wait with about 50 other people in the waiting room until they call you in for "classification". That's where they decide the urgency of your illness. (Of course, people who are injured really badly don't have to go through this process...they are rushed straight in to see a doctor.) Then you just wait to be called. The waiting room is full of flu victims, sprained ankles, broken ribs, ear aches and things like that. Normally I would have just gone to the pharmacy down the street to pick up some ear drops, but Jose insisted that a doctor tell me what I needed. We Americans tend to self-diagnose and self-medicate, but the Spaniards go to the doctor for EVERYTHING. So we preceeded to wait for 3 hours for some ear drops. However, I am happy to say that my ear ache is finally getting better, and I can now chew solid food without being in excruciating pain.