A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I will have this tattooed on my pill popping finger. For the last 24 hours I have lived in a fuzzy world, suspended over a toilet bowl, with fate’s thumb firmly pressed on the vomit button. An ear infection had turned into a hospitalisation and I had nobody to blame but myself.

The day had started normally. It was a bit more difficult to balance at lunchtime, but I thought no more of it. The fireworks started after an afternoon run and an hour of Dolly Parton. Pain. So much pain. Like a small man was open-cast-mining in my ear. Every noise was another scrape of his shovel against my eardrum.

Lynn – the voice of reason on occasions like this – suggested contacting medical friends for advice. Soon we had three diagnoses – all recommending different drugs. In a moment of intense pain and impatience I took them all.

The next morning the world was at peace. My headache and ear ache had gone. My eye pain had gone. In fact everything had gone. I was numb.

I just made it to the bathroom before the nausea and dizziness descended. I collapsed on the floor. A minute later I was throwing up into the toilet. This wasn’t ear ache.

The voice of reason suggested ditching other medical advice and heading straight to the hospital. Alex, the ever-patient director of the Berlitz language school was seconded to help us.

A tupperware carton was commandeered as a vomit-box and the three of us screeched round to the hospital, Lynn making polite small-talk whilst I tried not to dribble onto the upholstery.

Within 40 minutes a doctor was telling us that the problem could be in any of three parts of the ear and that ‘audio testing’ was required.

Audio testing involves sitting in a sound proofed room where different decibel words are played to you. They call, you respond. Except I don’t speak Portuguese. So was at the mercy of Alex’s vocabulary: ‘Cucumber’, ‘Battleship’, ‘Diabetes’, ‘Egg Custard’, ‘Fountain Pen’, ‘Granola’. I felt for the vomit box.

The audio testing was inconclusive, so it was back to doctor number 1. At this point the voice of reason produced the drugs I had taken the night before. Tramadol, it transpires is not for ear ache. It is for numbing the trauma of amputation, gunshot wounds and open fractures when nothing else is available. Two, would be considered a big dose for a person my size. The addition of 1.5g of Paracetamol was a step too far. As were the two Ibuprofen and Brazilian anti-inflammatories.
All in all, she implied I was an idiot and that the pain I was in was unlikely to be from ear ache, and more likely from the cocktail of drugs I had guzzled. Lay off the coffee, stop drinking beer and take these antibiotics for the next ten days.

The irony was that those antibiotics were about the only drug I hadn’t stuffed in my mouth the night before.

Don’t be an idiot. Read the packets carefully before taking medicine. And when it says ‘suitable for severe pain’, think severe.