Growing Older -Ear Wax
Posted: December 5, 2007, 7:20 pm
For years in college I had issues with Cerumen, (ear wax) and about twice a year I needed to get my ears cleaned out. No big deal, my mother who is a nurse, would get the drops, the water bulb and wash away the impurities. Call it a cochlear douche.
Fast forward to mid-November of 2007. I'm beginning to not hear so well out of my right ear. I go to my now retired mother and she blows the dust off of her old ear cleaning kit and proceeds to mess around with my ear. I keep expecting to hear the whoosh of the wax being washed away, but instead I only feel pressure, the kind of pressure you feel when trying to slide on jeans from three years ago.
She stops the procedure and puts some more drops from an earwax bottle that expired in 1985 in my ear. I go a few more days of questionable hearing when one day at work, I feel a shift in my ear and all goes muffled. kind of like when you are kinda drunk and go down on a woman and get really into it and she squeezes her thighs together so tightly your eyes swell - that kind of muffled hearing - just that your tongue isn't quite as tired.
I call the doctor and request a professional blowing. I get into the doctor's office and get my ear scoped by the doctor - 'Ummm - yeah, you have an infection in there'. great.
he brings in Nurse Ratchet with the Metal Bellow to blow out the crud. She fills a basin with warm water, puts in some hellish pink solution and draws the cocktail into the Hypo.
She places this medieval utensil in my ear and bears down - I hear the rush of water and feel the pressure - the pressure this time is that of trying to blow up a frozen Hot Water bottle - I thought my ear was about to give birth - and frankly it did -
out popped a pinky nail sized chrysalis of puss and malleable fleshy flakes. It looked as though there was a waxy pupa being constructed in my ear. in came the doctor after 20 minutes of waiting, and he looked in my ear and said, there is more in there, go at it again.
Thirteen more attempts to get the remaining offending cocoon failed. I now have no equilibrium from all the pressure being forced into my brain left me non ambulatory.
The doctor said to use some antibacterial drops and see if that would do it. He then knocked on wood, threw salt over his shoulder and I think hopped over a crack in the floor - I was assuming he was guessing on the next steps to remove this.
A few days pass and my ear is now more clogged than before - It seems that the lodged piece of remaining waxy infection had blocked the canal and trapped water. I could feel it move - sorta - more on that later.
I am now 80% deaf in my right ear. With two small kids this does not make the wife happy. I sleep on my left side, with my good ear in the pillow and cannot hear a damn thing with my left - so when the baby cries - well, I do not hear it. Obviously I need to see a specialist.
The morning of the appointment I feel the need to tilt my head sideways - I feel something shifting again in my ear. This time it is deeper and dammit, it is shifting. no - it is moving. there is something alive in my ear. There is something moving in my ear. Let me say this again, there is something in my ear and is not following the laws of physics and appears to be alive. It is in my ear. It is inside of my ear.
I go into the doctors office awaiting his prognosis, he looks into my ear and quizzes me - 'what lives in a warm, wet, dark environment? I responded with ' a salamander'.
He retorts, 'no, mold'.
WTF?!
"Yeah - I'm not touching that stuff, I'm sending you to an Ear, Nose and Throat guy.'
Um - how, does this happen? Well easy I learn, you have wax that blocks in water, that water ferments and mold grows - It happens once in a great while.
Nice.
I head to the specialist and he takes a look. His description is lovely - 'looks like bats hanging from black palm trees in there!' good lord, just get it out.
He takes me out of the exam room to the extraction room. I lie down and he informs me that this won't hurt, but will be uncomfortable. He then places a stint in my ear to straighten out the canal for him to 'vacuum'. He brings in the device and starts the sucking - You never know how loud something is until you have it sucking shit out two mm from your eardrum. it sounds like a Dentist's drill, only faster and with intermittent stops for big chunkages.
He gets the low hanging fruit and goes deeper. PLUG!.
He pulls out (never thought I would type that) and gets a larger vacuum attachment - I think he is going into the Deep Shag. The noise with this attachment is even louder than the first - I liken it to what a bird hears right before it is sucked into a jet engine. Like vacuuming a piece of jam on your carpet at home, he keeps stabbing at this obstruction over and over again and it just isn't being broken apart.
He pulls out again, now pissed, clicks the dial 'to 11' and bends back down. I just sit in horror knowing that he is about to render me deaf and possibly give me a lobotomy. The sound is now louder and the vortex has the intensity of a starving lamprey affixing itself to a 100 year old muskellunge, I hear the 'whoosh' I hear the pop, I can hear. The doctor does back in for the kill and cleans me out (never thought I would type that either).
I look on the gauze to see the fruit of my labor - it had the consistency of the end of a tied up balloon knot and was about the size of pencil eraser. It had no weight, but it had my respect - I will dry it out and make a bolo tie out of it.
I then went into the next chamber and was given a dusting of anti fungal in my ear and sent on my way.
How do I keep this from happening again? You can't, its just part of Growing Older.
Fast forward to mid-November of 2007. I'm beginning to not hear so well out of my right ear. I go to my now retired mother and she blows the dust off of her old ear cleaning kit and proceeds to mess around with my ear. I keep expecting to hear the whoosh of the wax being washed away, but instead I only feel pressure, the kind of pressure you feel when trying to slide on jeans from three years ago.
She stops the procedure and puts some more drops from an earwax bottle that expired in 1985 in my ear. I go a few more days of questionable hearing when one day at work, I feel a shift in my ear and all goes muffled. kind of like when you are kinda drunk and go down on a woman and get really into it and she squeezes her thighs together so tightly your eyes swell - that kind of muffled hearing - just that your tongue isn't quite as tired.
I call the doctor and request a professional blowing. I get into the doctor's office and get my ear scoped by the doctor - 'Ummm - yeah, you have an infection in there'. great.
he brings in Nurse Ratchet with the Metal Bellow to blow out the crud. She fills a basin with warm water, puts in some hellish pink solution and draws the cocktail into the Hypo.
She places this medieval utensil in my ear and bears down - I hear the rush of water and feel the pressure - the pressure this time is that of trying to blow up a frozen Hot Water bottle - I thought my ear was about to give birth - and frankly it did -
out popped a pinky nail sized chrysalis of puss and malleable fleshy flakes. It looked as though there was a waxy pupa being constructed in my ear. in came the doctor after 20 minutes of waiting, and he looked in my ear and said, there is more in there, go at it again.
Thirteen more attempts to get the remaining offending cocoon failed. I now have no equilibrium from all the pressure being forced into my brain left me non ambulatory.
The doctor said to use some antibacterial drops and see if that would do it. He then knocked on wood, threw salt over his shoulder and I think hopped over a crack in the floor - I was assuming he was guessing on the next steps to remove this.
A few days pass and my ear is now more clogged than before - It seems that the lodged piece of remaining waxy infection had blocked the canal and trapped water. I could feel it move - sorta - more on that later.
I am now 80% deaf in my right ear. With two small kids this does not make the wife happy. I sleep on my left side, with my good ear in the pillow and cannot hear a damn thing with my left - so when the baby cries - well, I do not hear it. Obviously I need to see a specialist.
The morning of the appointment I feel the need to tilt my head sideways - I feel something shifting again in my ear. This time it is deeper and dammit, it is shifting. no - it is moving. there is something alive in my ear. There is something moving in my ear. Let me say this again, there is something in my ear and is not following the laws of physics and appears to be alive. It is in my ear. It is inside of my ear.
I go into the doctors office awaiting his prognosis, he looks into my ear and quizzes me - 'what lives in a warm, wet, dark environment? I responded with ' a salamander'.
He retorts, 'no, mold'.
WTF?!
"Yeah - I'm not touching that stuff, I'm sending you to an Ear, Nose and Throat guy.'
Um - how, does this happen? Well easy I learn, you have wax that blocks in water, that water ferments and mold grows - It happens once in a great while.
Nice.
I head to the specialist and he takes a look. His description is lovely - 'looks like bats hanging from black palm trees in there!' good lord, just get it out.
He takes me out of the exam room to the extraction room. I lie down and he informs me that this won't hurt, but will be uncomfortable. He then places a stint in my ear to straighten out the canal for him to 'vacuum'. He brings in the device and starts the sucking - You never know how loud something is until you have it sucking shit out two mm from your eardrum. it sounds like a Dentist's drill, only faster and with intermittent stops for big chunkages.
He gets the low hanging fruit and goes deeper. PLUG!.
He pulls out (never thought I would type that) and gets a larger vacuum attachment - I think he is going into the Deep Shag. The noise with this attachment is even louder than the first - I liken it to what a bird hears right before it is sucked into a jet engine. Like vacuuming a piece of jam on your carpet at home, he keeps stabbing at this obstruction over and over again and it just isn't being broken apart.
He pulls out again, now pissed, clicks the dial 'to 11' and bends back down. I just sit in horror knowing that he is about to render me deaf and possibly give me a lobotomy. The sound is now louder and the vortex has the intensity of a starving lamprey affixing itself to a 100 year old muskellunge, I hear the 'whoosh' I hear the pop, I can hear. The doctor does back in for the kill and cleans me out (never thought I would type that either).
I look on the gauze to see the fruit of my labor - it had the consistency of the end of a tied up balloon knot and was about the size of pencil eraser. It had no weight, but it had my respect - I will dry it out and make a bolo tie out of it.
I then went into the next chamber and was given a dusting of anti fungal in my ear and sent on my way.
How do I keep this from happening again? You can't, its just part of Growing Older.
Another classic!