Okay, this is another one of those 'personal hygiene/grooming' posts that might be a bit too much information for some of you. It involves Q-tips and ears and wax. If that sounds like it might be too icky for you, feel free to move along.
Anyway, who else besides me does not follow the instructions on the packaging and actually sticks the Q-tip in their ear? Oh come on, I know you are out there. I never used to do it when I was young, but one summer (in high school I think) when I was swimming a lot, my right ear got clogged. It was extremely painful with the pressure. We got one of those over-the counter remedies with drops that are supposed to melt the wax buildup and relieve the pressure. Well the drops barely touched it. I suffered for at least another day or so before my mother finally agreed to take me in to the doctor.* He said both my ears were severely clogged with wax. My mother made a crack about "well no wonder you never seem to hear me." So the doctor got out this big metal syringe, filled it with warm water, and had me hold a metal pan under my ear as he squirted it in with pretty strong pressure. You would not believe the nasty gunk that came out. Some of it was in cylindrical chunks!
So from then on, I regularly took those Q-tips and went to town on my ear canals. Every once in awhile I will irritate one a little bit, but I figure it's a small price. Sometimes I'll put a drop of baby oil on the tip, and that helps. Sometimes I get a terrible itch in there and it just feels so good. I had a hearing test a year or so ago and they said I had excellent hearing. And I figure it's not as bad as a med student I used to know who would regularly stick an unbent paperclip in her ears!
*One day I must blog about when my mother took me in to the Dr. when I was in my early teens to see if I had mono or a -- get this -- tapeworm because I was so listless all the time. Needless to say I had neither; was probably depression.
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