Walking down 10 years of SDMB memory lane and reading part of the famous pimple thread got me thinking about ears, maybe because I’ve been battling an ear infection for two weeks and just had my third visit with the doctor.
Let’s just say they aren’t kidding when they say don’t use Q-tips inside your ear. I have had two lavages (the nurse squirts a solution of water, alcohol, and peroxide in your ear while you hold a bucket against your neck) and I have had two largish chunks of cotton, about the size of the swab of a Q-tip, come out. Og knows how long that’s been in there. I think I would know if I lost the end of a Q-tip in my ear, so this is years of threads of cotton getting pulled off when I disregard the advice of the medical community and swab out the inside of my ear.
While I thought the solution was going to come out through my nose while the nurse was squirting, it was ultimately satisfying to see those chunks come out, but a bit horrifying to think how long they’d been in there.
At least my ear doesn’t hurt any more, and it’s no longer clogged. I’ll pick up my new prescriptions today, but hopefully the second lavage did it. And I promise, no more Q-tips. :eek:
I know, with our vast membership, there must be someone who can top this!
Yow! Really? I like to gently dry off the insides of my ears, because I can’t stand the sensation of wet cold ear canals. I don’t dig vigorously or anything, just blot. But the swabs shed cotton threads in there with each use? Eeek.
Ewww. Now I feel like something is in my ear. Thanks!
I swab my ears every morning right after stepping out of the shower.
How far into the average human head is the ear drum, anyway (suppose I could search for that). Is it relatively easy for someone to look in your ear and see the end? Always wondered that.
Well, think about it. Earwax can be a bit sticky. You root around with a cotton swab, some of it may stay behind.
I don’t know how deep the ear canal goes, but the doctor always uses some sort of equipment with a light (Qadgop?) to look inside. The last time I was there the doctor noted my ear drum was still intact, so I think they can at least see that far in.
One day I was checking hubby’s ears and i could not visualize his ear drum, neither could KellyM. in fact, it looked almost cartoonishly black in his ear even though I was using a bright flashlight. One reason I was checking his ear is he has scales that build up and need to be removed or they get bloody underneath.
I told him to be still and slowly advanced a blunt metal probe and not far in there was a solid wall. It became obvious, one the ear scales had bled enough to close off the canal. The scab was smooth and seemed to almost be one with the sides of his ear canal.
I told him to be still and used some splinter tweezers to gently probe the edges. I was able to dislodge a flake enough that I could pull on it with the tweezers. I was able to loosen a few and on the third one I tugged, the whole scab came loose and I was able to remove it. Along the edges there were large flakes.
After I removed all the detritus, I could visualize the ear drum and I had managed not to break the skin on the sides of the canal! All was well, and he said he could hear better too.
I don’t like using anything pointy in the ear, but I could not get anything to move with the blunt probe or even less pointy tweezers. This is a definite, “don’t try this at home folks.”
My ears have a tendency to get really waxy. (My mom has the same problem, something I didn’t know until I complained to her about how much trouble I was having with my ear, which I’m about to detail to a TMI-ish degree.) A couple times in my life, I’ve had problems where the wax got dislodged and started really affecting my hearing. Like, my head was underwater. It is HORRIBLE. Both times, it required multiple trips to the doctor to get water and hydrogen peroxide squirted into my ears.
Holy shit, the stuff that has come out of my ears. Just these huge chunks of BLACK wax. It is so fucking nasty. But it’s so delightful to know that my ears are all clean.
It’s been several years since the last time, though. Is there any way I can do the ear cleaning effectively at home? Anyone know?
Being pregnant honks up all kinds of body chemistries, including skin oils. Early on, I had just dozens of clogged pores on my chest that I couldn’t rid myself of; this was coupled with random zits in odd (for me) places, like right next to a nostril.
My ears were apparently not spared. I do ever so rarely get a pimple in my ear; usually just right inside in the flatter part perpendicular to the lobe. They typically hurt like a MOFO, are obscenely difficult to pop, and bleed like a MOFO once popped.
Well, I felt one forming in that area of my left ear. It hurt for days, but I just couldn’t get anything out of it and no head became apparent. Then, while driving (probably not the best timing), I clenched my teeth and pressed against it with my thumbnail. POP! I heard. Ah, yes. Finally. Gross, but…finally. I used a tissue to dab a slightly-larger-than normal amount of pus, but noted there was no blood. This made me think that, perhaps, it wasn’t done.
When I came home, I asked hubby to see if anything more could be gotten out of it. Using two Q-tips, he pressed–and time and again it just continued to produce the same “large zit” amount. He never saw a head, or bleeding, just swollen skin and a tiny hole. He repeated his amazement time and again–“Seriously, there’s more? Really?” Eventually it seemed emptied of its infectious pool; hubby commented the skin inside the ear now looked a bit like a deflated balloon.
Hours later, I asked him to try again. He got MORE–“large zit” amount. Again. Sheesh. But, that was its end.
That, I think, is the most impressive pimple I’ve ever had–and in the ear no less. OUCH.
When I was in high school, I started to have earaches that were pretty much constant. It was pain, the plugged up feeling, and my hearing was reduced. I told my mother several times, but she was fairly convinced that I was exaggerating this to stay home from school (in her defense, I had indeed done that many times, so she’s not a totally terrible parent). Finally, toward the end of the school year, things got bad enough that she brought me to the doctor.
He poked around in my ears, and finally said “WTF? I think there’s something metal in there!” The lavage eventually dislodged a large ball of wax, at the center of which was the metal backing of an earring encrusted with bloody scabs and that yellowy-clearish dried pus. It was like I made a pearl, but you know, a pearl of pus and earwax.
I do remember that winter falling asleep on the couch after school, and when I woke up, one of my earrings had fallen off but I could never find the backing. So we’re talking at least six months.
The best part was when the doctor said “But that must have been so painful! Why didn’t you come in sooner?” and my mother just slunk down in her chair.
The black thing in my husband’s ear was just a scab. He has something like psoriasis which causes the skin on and in his ears to flake and if the flakes are not removed, they scab up underneath.
I once had an ear infection that was due to fluid backing up behind a zit in the ear. The doc put a wick in so the fluid behind the zit could get out and told me what was going on. The wick did its job and the skin over the zit became less raw feeling. I was able to get a pimple popper on it and cause it to splorch. After I hauled all the contents out, the swelling went down and the infection went away. Lesson learned, and to my surprise the doc agreed, pop the ear canal zits early if I can! I normally had, but the one time I decide to be good and not pop it, wham, infection!
you can get plastic otoscope at drugstore to look in ear, pull ear gently back at top and you can see eardrum if canal is clear. you will see wax and spiders if not.
you can get ear syringe and peroxide and oil drops to soften and remove earwax. earwax in many people both works its way out with junk it snagged and some wax can get reabsorbed. in some people it builds up and using drops and warm water to flush a time or two a year. you can get enough earwax remaining and harden to severely attenuate your hearing.
I’d say yes, it is an urban legend. I’d imagine a live cockroach wouldn’t stay long–there’s not much room and no food. But a dead cockroach might be within reason. My wife (an audiologist) has told me stories of things she has found in people’s ears. Bugs (dead ones), buttons and peas in children, Q-Tip cotton, and other objects; and more earwax than you can imagine…yep, she’s seen it all. Thanks to her, I’ve actually been able to see my own eardrum. She had a video otoscope in her clinic–it had a small camera in it, and I could see what she was seeing on a computer monitor: my ear canal, the wax in it, the eardrum, and the bone (the malleus?) on the other side of the eardrum. Kind of neat!
I’ve always had problems with wax, to the point where it completely blocked the ear canal on occasion. Soon after we met, she offered to see what she could do about it. After irrigation didn’t work, and a wax-busting solution didn’t work, she carefully used a curette* to pull a blob the size of a pencil eraser out. The other ear proved to be too much for irrigation, the solution, and her skills with a curette; so she set me up with an appointment with one of the ENTs in her clinic. He saw me at the hospital, where he suctioned a blob the size of the last joint of my little finger out. She’s kept an eye on things, and my ears have never been that bad since, but I’ll admit to being very surprised at how much was there.
Don’t try this at home with any tool. My wife is a professional who is educated, licensed, regulated, and insured for these purposes. If you have problems with earwax, visit a medical/audiological professional similarly licensed etc. to practice in your area.
Why couldn’t a live cockroach get stuck in earwax? Some people have very gummy/sticky wax. I do know other bugs have gotten stuck in ears. I had one fly in mine, but it made its own way out, but I do have very dry ear wax. My cousin had some flying insect in her ear stuck fast and they flushed it out. Olive oil is generally the recommendation to both smother the bug so it will stop making all that noise and also to soften the wax so the bug can be retrieved or flushed out.
I lay on my side and have mrAru squirt just enough peroxide in to fill the ear canal, and I lay there with the whirlies as my earwax gets the bubble treatment. When the bubbling stops, I roll over onto a towel to drain the gak out while we repeat on the other ear. I have to do it about once a month for the wax.
My dad once had a roach crawl into his ear while he was sleeping. It got itself trapped and was causing Dad a lot of pain as it scrabbled around and trampled his eardrum. In desperation, he got Mom to pour some sweet oil into his ear and they drowned it. At work the next day, he went to the infirmary and they extracted it. Ick.
Not so much gross as disturbing: I’ve got tiny ear canals, so I’ve always had trouble with ear infections and such. When I was a pre-teen, though, I went to the dr. for what I thought was an infection and found out that there was a bone growing in my ear. A BONE. WTF? Watched it for a few years, and I eventually had to have surgery to get it removed.
Also, while I was seeing the ENT doctor pre-surgery, he would often, instead of cleaning my ears with the hydrogen-peroxide syringe, use a probe with a vacuum attachment. I had the distinction of being the first kid to not try to run screaming out of the office.
