My Love Hate Relationship With My Ears

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  I have had swimmer’s ear too many times to count, but I can proudly say that I’ve only ever had an ear infection once. The swimmer’s ear makes sense since I was a part of local swim teams from ages 9 to 18, even though I wasn’t really good at the sport. The ear infection though I remember exactly when it happened. I was in fourth grade when I got it, and I woke up in unbearable pain. Now, I was notorious for being a crier when I was little (so much so that my mom didn’t believe that I had gotten stung by a jellyfish until I got stung two more times, but that’s a story for another time), so I’m glad that my mom believed me when this happened. My mom called the doctor’s office and the earliest appointment that they had for me was at 3:30. At first this was fine, until about 10 am. My mom suddenly decided that she was not mentally prepared to listen to me scream and cry in pain for 5 more hours so she called again and luckily was able to get an appointment in 45 minutes in the next town over. When we got there, my mom was surprised to find that the doctor that was going to help me was actually her friend who is a Pediatrician. This was not a welcome surprise for me, as they proceeded to chat and catch up for about 10 minutes as I sat on the table in pain, waiting for some kind of resolution or answer. Finally, my mom’s friend was able to say that I had an ear infection, and she sent off a prescription to CVS for ear drops. 

I hated the ear drops, and even still I hate ear drops. It feels like I have water stuck in my ear that I can’t get out and that I’m not supposed to get out. It feels counterintuitive and I hated not being able to hear what was going on around me. One ear was in a pillow and couldn’t hear and the other was full of ear drops and I refused to use them. This ended up being the right call when suddenly my ear started to ooze an unknown liquid later in the day. Several frantic texts to her friend later, my mom let me know that my eardrum had most likely ruptured and that I now was not allowed to use the ear drops. Although it may not seem like it, my eardrum rupturing was a win for me. Not only did I no longer have to use the ear drops, but when it ruptured (and subsequently oozed), all pressure in my ear was miraculously released. The upside of all of this? I was out of school for over a week because my ear was so sensitive to sound immediately afterward. Little fourth grade me was thrilled.

All of this is a good precursor to about a month ago. I woke up on a Thursday morning and realized that I could not hear out of my left ear. Naturally, I freaked out a little bit before eventually calling my mom. She suggested calling Norton Medical to schedule an appointment, before leaving me with the fact that if I tugged on my earlobe and it hurt, it was probably an ear infection. Of course, I hyper-fixated on that detail as I waited for my appointment, eventually convincing myself that it had to be an ear infection and how was I going to go to class and learn anything if I couldn’t even hear what was being said? Spoiler alert, it was not an ear infection. The doctor looked in my ear and said something along the lines of “well I can’t tell if you have an ear infection since a big ball of wax is blocking my view of your eardrum”. I think it was at that moment that I realized that I did not in fact have an ear infection, just a big ball of wax blocking all noise to my left ear. I nervously chuckled and very quickly agreed to them flushing my ear to get rid of the ear wax. It was honestly kind of magical getting my ear flushed (which was far too reminiscent of ear drops for my liking) and suddenly being able to hear fully again. It was also cool to see the surprisingly large wax clump that came out of my ear. I had a good laugh about it as I left the office, but fun fact, it is very common to be disoriented after having your ear flushed as your center of gravity is usually formulated with your ears. That was something that I learned a bit belatedly as I stumbled around in the room immediately afterward while trying to grab my phone to text everyone something along the lines of “LMAO it wasn’t an ear infection, I just had a huge ball of wax lodged in my ear and in the way. Anyways I can hear again.”

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