Today I got my ear flushed. Or ears, I should say. Despite the fact that nothing was wrong with my right ear, it was deemed necessary to flush THAT one, too. Now, for those of you who are not in the know, this “ear flushing” is the worst possible thing ever. True story. Allow me to elaborate in graphically sarcastic terms. If you do not want to read about the gross-ness of ears, you ought to turn back now.
First, prepare yourself to be put in my shoes. Your first step? Plug your left ear. Just close it off. Now pretend that you ear is like that for three days with nothing actually plugging it. You have tried cleaning it. You have had someone else look at it. As far as YOU can tell, there is nothing keeping you from hearing. And yet you cannot hear. Your directional hearing is now destroyed. Anything anyone says into your left ear becomes muffled, meaning you get to ask people to “speak into your good ear”. It is rather like being partially deaf.
Now, imagine that every time you yawn or stifle some sort of air escaping from you your ear hurts. A sharp, almost stabbing-like pain. In your ear. Imagine you are tired.
You decide to break down and call the health center on campus. You make an appointment, suffer through the day until you tromp over to the building and await their call. You follow a nice lady to a nice little room with a nice little couch and a nice little computer where she sits and asks you questions about what’s wrong, and you are free to explain that this is not the first time you have had to suffer through your ear being plugged by a mysterious force. Those of us who have had this before know, of course, that this “mysterious force” is probably a build-up of ear wax. Yes, ear wax. And you already know what the procedure is for fixing this problem. You are desperately hoping you just have an ear infection.
Instead, you are informed that you were right the first time around, and you indeed have a build-up of earwax. Hooray for you! You get to have some strange, unidentifiable liquid put in your ears, held in by cotton balls, while the nurse leaves and you are allowed to flip through the People magazine tossed forlornly at your side. Look at all of the celebrities who have started dating other celebrities. Look at how they can probably hear of out their ears.
The nurse comes back and tells you she will more or less be blasting ear wax out of your ears with a jet of high-powered water. In your ear. High powered water jets in your ears. Your job is to sit patiently, inform her of when she is hurting you, and hold a cup under your ear so you don’t get drenched in nasty ear wet.
Since your right ear has nothing wrong with it, that ear flushing is rather easy. You are stuck with the feeling that you just went swimming and there is water stuck in your ears, but there isn’t much suffering and you remain completely dry. Now you are left to dread the effect on your left ear. You know. The one you actually can’t hear out of.
Well, the process is similar to the right ear. Except that it sounds different. And you have to repeat the process 8 times, each pause between attempts accompanied by the nurse looking in your ear and muttering about how DEEP the wax is jammed down there, sounding just as surprised as can be. Each attempt to chip away at your horrid ear blockage hurts more and more because the water is irritating your pansy earflesh, and guess what. You still can’t hear.
Finally she decides to put peroxide in your ear. After two more attempts that are coupled with a sound like popcorn going off in your head, she finally is pleased to inform you that you can hear again. And you can! Fancy that. The doctor waltzes in, tells you you probably don’t have an ear infection, then you may leave. The nice nurse thanks you for putting up with the pain. Which really wasn’t that bad now that you can hear. Looking back, the experience wasn’t that bad. Plus everything is so loud and clear, and you don’t have to hear yourself three times louder than everyone else when you speak.
But it was fun to write about it and tell everyone else about your suffering, right?
Of course right.
