How Much Would You Pay?

My ears are not working right. I've had ear issues most of my life, but recently they've gotten seriously annoying. I'm just getting over being sick for about the last three weeks; a nasty throat infection that seems to have crawled up and taken over my ears. Sarah wrote me a prescription for some antibiotics and we seem to have beaten that into submission, but then the ear problems started up.

I've had lots of ear infections, and tubes twice. They fix things for a while, but my right ear seems to revert to its previous status once the tube works it way out. So when I started having ear pain about a week ago, I stopped in at the ED and let Sarah take a look. "Ugly," she called them, and told me to go see an ENT. I went today.

After a quick glance she confirmed the ugly diagnosis and sent me down the hall for a hearing test. That confirmed the indeed my right ear wasn't working too well. When I was done I went to a different room where a mighty ear microscope was used to peer into my head.

The right ear had some icky drainage which got suctioned out. If you've never had the pleasure of having someone suction out your ear, don't worry that you're missing anything good. It's painful and louder than you can imagine. Not quite as spooky as having the tubes put in where they have to cut into your eardrum, but still bad.

When she looked at the left ear, we had another surprise. I'd been noticing this odd sensation when I tried to equalize pressure in my ears. Instead of a 'pop', I could feel air just moving out constantly. Apparently that's because there's a small perforation in that eardrum. Luckily it's not hurting my hearing and should clear up by itself.

So the diagnosis was that my right ear is indeed messed up and needs some fixin'. She said at the very least I'll probably need another tube. There's some more permanent fix that involves harvesting cartilage from somewhere and grafting it onto the eardrum, thereby strengthening it. Sounds spooky, but being able to hear would be nice. She said we'd discuss it during a followup two weeks from now. In that time I need to put some antibiotics in my ear.

Which leads me to the question at the title of this post. How much do you think that 7.5 ml bottle cost? HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY? $5? $10? KEEP GOING!

With insurance: $30 Without: $105

$105! For a quarter of an ounce! That's like $6,700 a pound. That's half as much as gold. You'd think for that much, it might at least be endorsed by some celebrity. Kobe Bryant Certified Ear Drops, maybe.