Few things in primary care give patient and doctor mutual and instant gratification.
It’s been a while since I reduced a “nursemaid’s elbow” or a spontaneous shoulder dislocation other than my own, or a finger dislocation, but those all count.
I once wrote about curing deafness in a man with a movement disorder by flushing ear wax more or less on the run as he bobbed around the exam room. That was instantly rewarding and also both exhausting and exciting. Even more ordinary cases of cerumen impaction are rewarding to treat. I almost never let my medical assistants get the satisfaction, or the risk, associated with that procedure.
A few months ago a man came to my Saturday clinic with a plastic tip from his hearing aid lodged sideways deep inside his ear canal. With the help of my modern headlamp (I trained on the cartoonish forehead mirror ENT doctors used to sport) and a delicate long pair of forceps I was able to remove it and relieve the stranger’s suffering.
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