Risen From The Deaf

I'd finally reached a point where my left ear felt as if it constantly had an ear plug in it, and my right one felt that way when I first awoke in the morning before clearing up after walking around a bit. I figured it was time either for my first visit to an audiologist, or to register for sign language lessons.

I've never been real wild about people putting things in my ears. I hadn't had a feeling like this since my inaugural visit to the local dentist years ago. "Please be careful," I'd urged back then, in the manliest voice I could muster under the nerve-wracking circumstances. At least then I could see the guy inserting his tools into my orifice. Now I was at the mercy of a grip-and-grin smiley doc who instructed me to look away from him, then started leaning in toward my ear as if to insert. It didn't help much that he commented to his trainee that he was about to "do some drilling." In fact, planner that I am, I started mentally rehearsing different possible reactions I could have such as flailing, cursing, or primal screams. Yet I mostly clenched up and took it, enough so that the physician's assistant asked if I was all right.

Turns out he was putting a skinny vacuum tube down in there to suck out any wax buildup. Even a skinny vacuum, shoved darn close to your eardrum, sounds like the T.V. on full blast. It was with more amazement than panic that I thought "Eardrums can safely withstand this kind of noise?" Surely so, and in fact later a hearing test verified that my eardrums were responding normally. Without going into great detail of what he excavated with the vaccum, I had figured wax to be the problem even as I set the appointment - a medic had diagnosed that two whole years ago during my routine physical - and "earplug" is probably the best description of what had accumulated in there by now (and Dr. Giddy showed me with great enthusiasm).

As he sat me up, suddenly I felt as if I had canine-like hearing! That was relatively speaking of course... the subsequent hearing test determined that I was "well within the normal range." I was just glad that all that plugged stuff for all those years hadn't somehow deadened my natural hearing in some permanent way.

Today's lesson: Do NOT use Q-tips in your ear canal! Ears have a way of cleaning themselves, as long as you don't pack it down in there with a cottony swab every morning. Heck, they said they could see a Q-tip imprint in there. Oh, and visit your audiologist regularly. My next appointment's in 6 months, and you'd better believe I'll be there!