Small objects lodged in odd places

When I lived in L.A., and worked in the Biz, I went to Dr. Waxler at the Bob Hope Health Clinic. I liked Waxler a lot - he was easy to talk to, he explained things well, he was responsive to my concerns, and he took the time to listen to me. I often got the impression something happened at his previous employment that affected his confidence, but I liked him enough as a doctor to continue seeing him for a while after I had moved to the Bay Area ("Yeah, my doctor lives 400 miles away from me. No house calls from him.").

On Waxler's desk in his office was a fake breast. It was made to feel like a real breast, and might if the woman's whose breast was being modelled didn't have dense breasts (don't ask). I picked up the breast when I was talking to him at one point, and started playing with it. Waxler commented to me that the breast was a learning tool for helping women find cancer lumps in their breasts.

All women's breasts have some lumps in them. It's a matter of construction since there are different cell types and functions inside the breast. Most women who feel a lump in their breasts for the first time are feeling lumps that have been there all along, but have changed in consistency, and are therefore noticed.

This particular fake boob I was mashing around had a rock in it. Most (not all, mind you) cancerous lumps in breasts are hard, similar to the rock. By finding the rock in the breast, a person could practice breast examinations, and get a feel (pun intended) for the process.

A bit over a year ago, maybe more, when in the shower, I noticed something under my arm, along the outside of my breast. It was hard, but very, very small. I pondered it for a bit, it wasn't there yesterday. Or was it? I asked Kris to check it out. He didn't know what it was. I talked to Lisa about it, she said have it checked out immediately. Good advice.

After a few days of worrying about this little thing (it was about one millimeter across, hard as a rock, and near the surface), I looked at it more closely.

And realized it was a tiny stone stuck in a skin pore. I realized this when it popped out as I was worrying.

Stupid stone.

Kris and I laughed about it, and I forgot about it.

Until tonight.

On the plane heading to Colorado, I was in the restroom (toliet area, lavatory, bathroom, whatever) washing my hands when I noticed a bit of puss at the inside of my right eye. This was unsurprising, so I finished washing my hands, making sure they were particularly clean, and tried to wipe the puss out. It wouldn't budge. Okay, so it's deeper in my eye than I thought it was. When I pulled my lower lid down more and tried again. No luck. What the heck?

After a good minute of futzing with my eye, I finally got the object out. I looked at it very closely, and concluded it was a man-made object. White, with a little knob on one side, it was just over a millimeter long, and hard. When I tried to squish it, it popped out from between my nails.

So, two odd foreign tiny objects. In places where they shouldn't be.

Weird.