truth, often harder to believe than...

Recently, as recounted to me by my mother, my step father went to his doctor because his ear bled during the night after he tried to clean it out. His doctor took him down to see an ear, nose, throat specialist, who looked in Andy's ear and was wtf? So Andy explained that when he'd been in the military, he'd fallen out of a helicopter and then been in an explosion, and the military doctors had never really treated him for it.

So this doctor uses a magnet thing and extracts bits of shrapnel that have been in my poor step father's inner ear for 42 years.

Also? This kind of explains some things.