Ear Horrors
I take my ears for granted. I have a ridiculous anatomical defect that causes wax to build in my ears to the point that it blocks my hearing, pressurizes my head and makes me miserable and weak. This happens gradually over the course of two or three years, so that when the blockage starts to get critical it always takes me by surprise, like some obscure auto-maintenance task. In other people the mechanism of wax-removal is as trouble-free as a well-run ant colony. In me, that mechanism is broken.
Last night while I slept, a boulder of wax dropped into just the right place in the left side of my head and I woke up this morning unable to hear out of my left ear. I went to work with my head tilted to one side. Your ears work as a team -- losing hearing in one of them doesn't just dim the volume, it changes everything about the sounds around you. There were odd dopplering effects, conversations aimed directly at me from across the room that seemed to be coming from behind my head. My balance, mood, emotional well-being, sense-of-self, contentment, effectiveness and joy all were impaired. I left work early to go to the Urgent Care Center in Monroeville (an awesome resource, highly recommended) so they could hoover all that shit out of my ears and bring my personality back.
If you're squeamish about ears or the things that come out of human bodies, you shouldn't read the rest of this post. Really. Turn back now.
The doctor peered into both of my ears with his instrument, said they both had to be "done", and left the room. Then a nurse came in with four blue padded diapers, a specially-shaped white plastic water receptacle to tuck under the receiving ear, and an enormous plastic syringe about the size of a caulking gun. She tucked the blue diapers into a ruff around my neck, tucked the white bucket under my right ear, filled a shallow blue kidney-shaped pan with warm tap water, sucked the water up into the syringe, inserted the tip of the syringe into my right ear, said, "Ready?", did not wait for an answer, and pushed the plunger.
The caulking gun holds what I estimate to be about eight ounces of water. Having that much water pressure-sprayed into your external auditory canal is a surprisingly joyful experience. You get the same sort of "am I going to live through this?" glee that comes from eating too much wasabi. It tickles, and there's a roar and whoosh very much like being driven to ground by unexpected ocean waves, so that all of your "I'm drowning!" instincts kick into gear.
The nurse shot my right ear with about five syringe-fulls of water. She kept saying, "Wait'll you see what's coming out of there! This is awesome!" When she was done she couldn't wait to show me the horrors that had sluiced into the ear bucket. It looked like what's left in the kitchen sink after making Mughlai Korma.
And that wasn't even the blocked ear. For the left side, she had to use about ten syringe-fulls, half of them to nudge this one stubborn cliff of gunk up high enough so that she could hook it out, bit-by-bit, with a wee white crochet-looking tool. That part hurt. After each scrape, she showed me the concentrated spice she'd dug out of there. "Awesome!" she said. She was a great nurse. When she was done, she peered into my ears with her lighted tool and said, "Your ears are clean as a whistle."
The second when my hearing popped back into place was almost worth the whole horrible ordeal. My ears felt pink and tingly and wetly newborn. I left with a spring in my step. I'm already taking them for granted again.
Last night while I slept, a boulder of wax dropped into just the right place in the left side of my head and I woke up this morning unable to hear out of my left ear. I went to work with my head tilted to one side. Your ears work as a team -- losing hearing in one of them doesn't just dim the volume, it changes everything about the sounds around you. There were odd dopplering effects, conversations aimed directly at me from across the room that seemed to be coming from behind my head. My balance, mood, emotional well-being, sense-of-self, contentment, effectiveness and joy all were impaired. I left work early to go to the Urgent Care Center in Monroeville (an awesome resource, highly recommended) so they could hoover all that shit out of my ears and bring my personality back.
If you're squeamish about ears or the things that come out of human bodies, you shouldn't read the rest of this post. Really. Turn back now.
The doctor peered into both of my ears with his instrument, said they both had to be "done", and left the room. Then a nurse came in with four blue padded diapers, a specially-shaped white plastic water receptacle to tuck under the receiving ear, and an enormous plastic syringe about the size of a caulking gun. She tucked the blue diapers into a ruff around my neck, tucked the white bucket under my right ear, filled a shallow blue kidney-shaped pan with warm tap water, sucked the water up into the syringe, inserted the tip of the syringe into my right ear, said, "Ready?", did not wait for an answer, and pushed the plunger.
The caulking gun holds what I estimate to be about eight ounces of water. Having that much water pressure-sprayed into your external auditory canal is a surprisingly joyful experience. You get the same sort of "am I going to live through this?" glee that comes from eating too much wasabi. It tickles, and there's a roar and whoosh very much like being driven to ground by unexpected ocean waves, so that all of your "I'm drowning!" instincts kick into gear.
The nurse shot my right ear with about five syringe-fulls of water. She kept saying, "Wait'll you see what's coming out of there! This is awesome!" When she was done she couldn't wait to show me the horrors that had sluiced into the ear bucket. It looked like what's left in the kitchen sink after making Mughlai Korma.
And that wasn't even the blocked ear. For the left side, she had to use about ten syringe-fulls, half of them to nudge this one stubborn cliff of gunk up high enough so that she could hook it out, bit-by-bit, with a wee white crochet-looking tool. That part hurt. After each scrape, she showed me the concentrated spice she'd dug out of there. "Awesome!" she said. She was a great nurse. When she was done, she peered into my ears with her lighted tool and said, "Your ears are clean as a whistle."
The second when my hearing popped back into place was almost worth the whole horrible ordeal. My ears felt pink and tingly and wetly newborn. I left with a spring in my step. I'm already taking them for granted again.