Ear Blockage

Ear Blockage

A couple of days ago I was washing up in the morning, ready to start my day. I had combed my hair and taken my medicine like I do every day. Grabbing 2 Q-tips I started to clean my ears when I got the most awful pain in my left ear. I thought I must have pushed too hard, lesson learned. When I got back to the bedroom I put in my hearing aids. Right one first, but when I was putting the left one in, I noticed something strange. The little, soft rubber hood at the end of the wire that goes into my ear was missing, but the mounting ring that is an internal part of it was still on the hearing aid. I looked around for the hood but it wasn’t anywhere to be found. I put a new hood on the hearing aid (I have spares), and went about my business. From that point on my ear started to give me problems. I thought I had just injured my ear canal somehow and it would be OK after a day or two.

It didn’t get any better so after several days I made an appointment with my doctor, Kenneth Cearlock. Right off, I told him I wanted him to have a look inside my ear to see if the hearing aid hood was stuck in there. He said he didn’t see it in there and compared it to what the right ear looked like. Hmmm. He said there was something in the left ear but he couldn’t be sure what it was and he had the nurse come in and rinse out my ear, hoping whatever it was would either come out or be shifted enough that he could tell what it was. This turned out to be a project turning into 10 or 15 minutes. The nurse said to hang on while she got a microscope attachment that hooked up to here Iphone. While she was having a look she held the phone so I could see too. There, unmistakably, was the hearing aid hood pushed up against my ear drum. She told the doctor and for the next 20 minutes or so they tried all kinds of ways to grab it and get it out. More flushing was involved and attempts to grab it with tweezers. Finally the nurse AND the doctor tried using the microscope attachment and the tweezers to locate and grab that sucker.

It was pretty interesting watching this micro-surgery going on in the Iphone. He positioned the tweezers just right, pinched hard, and pulled it right out. It was still a little tender after the extraction and I’m supposed to use some ear drops for a couple of days, but it looks like I’m on the mend.

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6 Responses to Ear Blockage

  1. Lisa says:

    I bet that hurt! But what is really like to know is, did you make the illustration yourself?

    • Butch says:

      Yes and no about the illustration. The cross section of the ear I got off the internet. The pictures of the hood and the hearing aid proper I took photos of and incorporated them into the picture.

  2. John Thompson says:

    When I saw the title of this post, I presumed there would be a banana involved. 🙂

  3. william Joseph hierstein says:

    Why didn’t you just have the doctor put an air hose in your other ear and blow it out.

  4. Butch says:

    I actually told the doctor to do that.

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