Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Last week, CQH had surgery on her ears. She had her ears pierced while we were in Australia in August, and impressed us with her totally unfailing responsibility in keeping her ears cleaned and cared for. She did everything right: cleaning her ears twice daily with the healing spray from the spa where she had her ears pierced, turning them regularly, leaving them alone, etc. There wasn't even a hint of a problem. She was allowed to change her earrings at Halloween, two months after they'd been pierced. Well, Halloween came and we took her earrings out, but her ears were so oozy and unhealed that we decided they needed more time, and we put the original earrings back in for a couple more weeks. At Thanksgiving, we changed out the original earrings for some cute "decorative" earrings. This is where the trouble started.

CQH said it hurt when we changed the earrings and kind of flipped out about it, so I told her that as long as she kept spraying the new earrings and twisting them, it should be fine, and that she could now wear these cute sterling silver earrings of bunny silhouettes all the time -- you know, simply switching out the original earrings for the cute ones, but keeping the same regimen. Oh, dear.

I guess maybe there's something about the earrings they do the piercing with that is more helpful for healing(??). We couldn't get the earrings out of her ears. The wound had oozed so much and crusted on there (is this the grossest blog post you've ever read, or what?) and we figured that the earrings were just sort of glued on there. LBH tried to clean them for her several times over several days, but each time she was flipping out and we just thought she was from outer space or something. After several cleaning sessions over several days, we could finally see that she'd lost the backs of both earrings and the crusty glue was so strong that we still couldn't get the earrings out of her ears, despite them having no backs. We just couldn't figure it out; it was so bizarre. A couple days later the mystery was solved -- quick as a wink, her earlobes had closed over the back clasps of both her earrings, eaten them up like a venus flytrap or something. We couldn't get the earrings out of her ears because the earrings were still clasped... only the clasps were now inside her earlobes where they couldn't be seen. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen or heard of.

Four very tiresome trips to the hospital later, Catherine had surgery* -- complete with general anesthesia -- to remove the earrings. She now has stitches on her earlobes that, ironically, look like earrings if you don't look too carefully. She can get her ears pierced again when her ears are fully healed. Think she'll want to? Maybe... but I'd guess not for many, many years to come.

Poor traumatized kid!

*Socialized medicine isn't efficient, but it was completely free! And the surgeon said he's done thousands of this identical surgery and hates pierced ears for just this reason. In fact, the girl in the bed next to CQH, who had surgery right before her, had the exact same surgery. Who knew?