Hole in Tonsil Area After Tonsillectomy

Rarely, a patient may notice a hole in the mucosa in the area where the tonsil used to be after removal ( tonsillectomy ). This hole typically is located in the anterior tonsil pillar as shown in the picture to the right. Less commonly, the hole may occur on the posterior tonsil pillar as shown below. Typically, this hole appears not immediately after surgery, but 5-10 days afterwards. Known as a fistula, this is a temporary situation as this hole will almost always close up over several …

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Embedded Earrings and Treatment

A few times a month, I have a patient, usually a young child, who presents with an earring that not only can not be removed, but is embedded within the earlobe (or ear) itself. There are two common scenarios that lead to this unfortunate situation: infection and fiddling. Infection is fairly straightforward. For whatever reason, the piercing gets infected and the earlobe skin starts to swell around and eventually even enveloping the earring itself. To prevent an embedded earring, immediate…

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Spider Found Living in Woman's Ear for 5 Days

Thanks to @beubank for alerting me to this story about a spider who lived in a woman's ear for 5 days before being removed. As an aside, in typical media blunder of factual error, in the Huffington Post , a picture is shown of the spider stating an "x-ray photo"... COME ON!!! The picture is NOT an x-ray in any way shape and form!!! It's just a regular ordinary picture one takes with a camera. On that note, August 9, 2012 must be the time for all media to report on all s…

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Posterior Tongue Tie

An ordinary garden-variety tongue tie  (also known as ankyloglossia) is an uncommon condition whereby the tongue is anchored to the floor of the mouth preventing the tongue tip from moving freely. Patients with tongue tie have greater difficulty with: feeding if infant speech if school-age child french kissing if young adult (more info on adult tongue ties here ) Treatment is tongue tie release which can be done at any time if difficulties arise. In infants and young adults , this …

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Earworms (The Song That Is Stuck In Your Head)

An earworm is when there is a tune that gets stuck in your head that lasts for minutes to hours. It wasn't really much interest for scientists to study until recently when they were able to determine the "characteristics" of a good earworm. In a study published in the British Journal of Psychology in November 2009 titled " Earworms ('stuck song syndrome'): Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts ", they found that the best earworms are: - Repetitive s…

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