Nish Kumar

Nish Kumar

The last time I went to hospital, it was perhaps for the most pathetic reason possible. In February 2020, at the age of thirty-four years, I got the end of a cotton bud stuck in my ear. Now, I understand there will be two immediate points of criticism and I’d like to address them:

1. ‘Cotton buds are so bad for the environment, how dare you contribute to the plastic waste. It’s almost as if that Extinction Rebellion sticker on your laptop means nothing’ – they were plastic-free ones.

2. ‘Everyone knows you shouldn’t be using those, they’re bad for your ears’ – admittedly I have no defence here. I know I shouldn’t be using them but it feels extremely satisfying in the short term, even though it’s ultimately self-destructive, like drinking alcohol or watching Question Time.

So, I was having a good old dig. But then I withdrew the magic stick, only to discover the cotton end had vanished. In the words of the unfortunate teacher who marked my year nine geography coursework: ‘This is dreadful and it’s entirely your fault, Nish.’

I snapped into action and called the cotton bud a d**k h**d. I then got my girlfriend to stand on a chair and look into my ear, in yet another incident in the course of our relationship that she describes as ‘a boundary violation’ and ‘a test of my saint-like patience’.

She couldn’t see anything. We then consulted our in-house physician Dr Google, a wildly underqualified individual whose diagnoses are too broad to be of use – ‘you are both absolutely fine and utterly doomed’ – and whose prescriptions are either ‘boil your whole head’ or for you to use a product that enlarges a part of your body that is not in any way affected by your current predicament.

Frankly, the only thing to recommend Dr Google is that he operated in the same hospital as Dr Bing, whose only diagnosis is ‘please just ask Dr Google – I have no idea’. And of course there’s also the rather old-fashioned Dr Ask-Jeeves, who always just sends you to the apothecary to fetch leeches.

Anyway, with no useful word from Dr G, I called NHS 111 and they gravely informed me that I’d have to go to hospital. So at 1 a.m. I headed over to the hospital and we waited in A&E with people who had legitimate reasons for being there, whilst I was there because something I knew I wasn’t supposed to be doing anyway had gone wrong.

The doctor who saw me would have been well within her rights to smack me in the mouth. Instead, she patiently listened and then had a look in my ears with an otoscope (thank you, Dr Google).

In that situation, it turns out there are two key phrases you don’t want to hear:

1. ‘OK, there’s nothing in there. I’m guessing it fell off after you pulled it out. The reason you are feeling pressure in your ear that you think is the cotton, is that you have a substantial build-up of wax and when you used the cotton bud you pushed it deeper inside.’

2. ‘By the way – big fan.’

Perhaps the worst place to be recognised as any kind of public figure is when a doctor is looking in your ear, at a candle shop’s worth of wax that has tricked you into thinking you had blocked your ear with the end of a cotton bud. I got the name of some ear drops and we skulked off with my girlfriend saying something about a ‘last straw’. I couldn’t really hear her because of the wax.

Anyway, why am I telling you this story? Well, a few reasons. Firstly, the doctor recognised me – so I am famous. That’s important to note. There are a lot of high-profile people in this book and I feel insecure about being included, so I’m really just putting this out there: someone recognised me from television, OK? So that means I’m the same as Paul McCartney.

Second, at no point did it ever cross my mind that this could ever cost me money. I wasn’t being charged despite it all being my fault. The NHS’s motto should be ‘free – even for morons’.

And third, because when I start to consider why I am grateful for the NHS, the simple truth is that I don’t know where to start. How can I begin to express my gratitude to its founders, who pursued an ideal of a healthcare system that would be free at the point of delivery? A system born out of the rubble of the Second World War, as a country dragged to the brink dared to imagine a better future for itself and its citizens. Where do I start to express gratitude to the NHS staff present at my birth, at my grandfather’s heart operation and my grandmother’s pneumonia last winter?

How can I express my admiration for the dedicated healthcare workers, among them my cousin, who have endured a decade of budget cuts, and yet still, in the hour of our need, have disregarded their own safety to protect us from Covid-19?

The truth is, I can’t. So I won’t. And I’ll just talk about my waxy ears.

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