Last Friday, I woke up in the morning with my right ear muted. I had no idea what caused it – I only know that there was something wrong with it. Sound was really soft in that ear. I initially thought that it would go away after a few hours, but nothing changed. In the afternoon, I visited a doctor who had a look inside my ear and told me that it was blocked with wax. Strange. Especially since my left ear was clear, and I had been cleaning both the same way ever since I was young (using cotton buds).
He recommended that I visit the pharmacy to pick up some drugs to soften the ear wax in the ear so that it can be washed out. I listened to his advice, so on Friday night, the whole of Saturday and Sunday, I kept using the ear wax softener. Unfortunately, it didn’t help. There were occasions when yawning would bring temporary relief to my right ear, but a few seconds later, it was back to being muted.
I was getting really annoyed by it, so when Monday came around and it wasn’t any better than it was on Friday, I decided to pay an ENT doctor a visit. He plopped me down onto a chair after I explained the situation, and he turned on a monitor in front of me. First he stuck this microscope into my left ear to see if it was fine – it was. Perfectly clean. No traces of wax stuck inside my ear hole. At this point, I was thinking to myself – what if there was nothing in my right ear hole and it was just damaged? Would I have to spend the rest of my life being deaf in one ear?
Boy, was I relieved when he plugged the camera into my right ear to show me what he suspected it would be. And boy, was it disgusting. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the inside of your own ears before – for me, it was an eye-opening experience. I wouldn’t recommend you google it but I won’t stop you if you want to.
The doctor told me that my right ear hole was clogged, so he used a tiny vacuum to suck the wax out of my ear. It didn’t hurt, but man the sound was loud, and the feeling of the vacuum pulling the wax off the walls of the ear hole felt very uncomfortable.
After the whole ordeal was over (I think it took less than five minutes – shorter than the amount of time I had to wait to register at the front desk), it wasn’t clear that my hearing was back to normal. I had been so used to the muted right ear for the past three days that I think my brain just ignored whatever sound that was picked up by my right ear.
What a way to end the year (with another visit to the hospital). Heh. Since that day, I’ve decided to change my ear cleaning methods – no more cotton buds for me. Using your towel to wipe the outside of your ears after showering is good enough, apparently. So that’s what I’ll be doing from now on. Hopefully I’ll never have to experience a blocked ear again.