Gross ear stories (TMI, of course)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

My dad, rest his soul, had horrible, horrible ear wax problems. I’m not sure if it was something to do with the screwed up surgeries he’d had on his ears to try and fix his eardrums and clean out infection when he was younger or what. All I know is the stuff he used to take out of his ears was black and looked like squishy bits of coal. He could clean his ears out on Sunday night and by Tuesday they were almost full again.

He had ear surgery about 10 years before he died to try and fix his ears one last time, and the surgery used skin from behind his ear to reconstruct the eardrum. Plus, the doctor had to detach his ears [Well hello there, Mister Van Gogh!] to put the replacement ear drums in, and he had to do a major, MAJOR cleaning before he could even get to the replacement site. He told me and my mom after the surgery that my dad had the waxiest ears he’d seen in his entire life.

Hubby’s got some nasty ears at times, and I’ve seen him pull stuff out that makes HIM gag.

42

Oh, the poor little guy. That must have been horrible for him.

43

A friend of mine once had a woodtick crawl into her ear and latch on. It swelled up with blood, and she had to go to a specialist to have it removed. I went with her, and I know this is true.

I had an ear infection and took pencillin for 14 days with no results. Then I started pouring alcohol down the ear. The first week gave a new dimension to my understanding of the word “pain,” but then the infection did clear up. It took a month of alcohol treatments.

44

I had an ear infection about a month and a half ago. It wasn’t. . .well, it wasn’t gross to look at. From the outside–at least at first–I looked completely normal. The ear wasn’t even red or anything. But the outer ear canal was completely blocked, and I had fluid in my middle ear, and the entire array felt like it was being jabbed with red-hot pokers by Satan’s head lice.

At first, it wasn’t so bad. I went to my GP, and he couldn’t visualize the eardrum; he said he was pretty sure it was a middle ear infection, gave me amoxicillin, and told me to clean out my ears with Debrox. It started getting better, almost went away. . .and then got a lot worse. It went from slightly hurty on Friday, to really annoying on Saturday, to “okay, didn’t sleep at all and I think I need to go to urgent care” on Sunday.

Went to urgent care, they gave me Zithromax and a diagnosis of swimmer’s ear, as well as a set of Cipro drops and some Darvocet. Nothing, and my ear was so swollen that I couldn’t get the drops in. The pain was bad enough that I was maxing out the OK dosages on both Tylenol (including the Darvocet) and ibuprofen, and still couldn’t sleep. Went to an ENT Tuesday, and he said my ear canal was awful. . .and that he was going to clean it out and insert a wick.

I’d never cried, pleaded, or begged at a doctor’s office before. I did then. But he cleared me out and put in the wick and gave me Vicodin. He also gave me Cipro to start taking if things got worse; my parotid gland started swelling, though, as did my lymph nodes, and so I started the Cipro. It started to clear up a bit after that, though I had to go for two followups, and a followup coming up to see if I have any permanent hearing loss (because the entire ear was eventually involved). My ear still doesn’t feel quite right.

But, oh, the vacuuming. You can hear everything when it’s right next to your eardrum. It was slurping and wet and grosser than anything ever. I didn’t get to see any of it, but the ear did start draining onto my pillow when I slept. That was pretty yellow-crusty-gross.

Plus–not exactly my ear, but three antibiotics, one after another? In a woman? Got my first ever yeast infection, which certainly didn’t help matters. Ended up with yet another prescription to get rid of that when the OTC (which was taken between the zithromax and the Cipro) didn’t work. Fun.

Other than that, I had an earring back stuck in my lobe for 2-3 years. I dug it out during 8th grade history. It didn’t really hurt at all; I thought it was kinda cool.

45

There are videos on youtube of earwax removal and live foreign body removal from the ear.

46

Thanks, but I just ate lunch.

47

After reading all these stories, I will NEVER stop cleaning my ears daily with Q-Tips

48

I don’t know about cockroaches, but my mother did once get an earwig stuck in her ear which my father extracted, along with lots of screaming on her part as she felt the thing wiggling. And my sister had a large moth removed from her ear once by the doctor, so I don’t think a small cockroach is beyond the scope of possibility.

49

Do gross earlobes count?

Back in junior high school, circa 1970; I encountered the grossest earlobe I have ever seen in my life. One of the girls from my class had pierced her own ears with a less than sterile sewing needle over the weekend. During the course of the week, I had noticed her right earlobe growing red and swelling very badly.

At lunchtime on Friday, she was in the girls’ room probing at her angry lobe in front of the large mirror above the sinks. She complained that it itched more than hurt, and kept squeezing it. Until the dam burst. A huge pus-bomb hit the mirror with a wet splotch, and just hung there.

The girl exclaimed “Oh, that feels so much better!” The rest of us observers were trying hard not to harf up our lunches. Yuck!

50

I remember my ear being really blocked up years ago, and when I initially went to see my doctor, she looked at it, and advised me to try oh, what’s it called - Debrox? The earwax melting stuff? So I did, but it only made it worse. I now had fluid in my ear, and it was extremely painful.

So I called again to have it flushed out. This time, I made an appointment with whoever was available.

So I go to get my ear flushed. OUCH, that fucking HURT. Well, it seems that the wax build up was so freaking dense, that all the Debrox did was melt it on the surface, so it was still stuck there, and the rest of it was packed inside.

Soooo, he proceeds to flush my ears. Eventually out pops this HUGE piece of wax the size of a grape. My shoulder, despite wearing a towel around my neck, is absolutely soaked. (The next time I had this done, I wore a rain coat!) I swear, I could hear echoes in my ear now, it was so clean.

51

I’ve never had it done professionally, but I read a site maintained by an ENT who recommended a 1:1:2 mixture of water, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide that works better than any of the commercial earwax removal products I’ve tried. I was able to getthis chunk out of one ear.

I wash out my ears every month or so. I could be wrong, by in my opinion, 99% of the pain associated with ear wax removal is not getting the liquid the right temperature. If you get the liquid at body temperature, you will barely notice it’s presence. I warm the solution in the microwave, and keep checking the temp with a thermometer (though I’ve done it often enough that I can tell with my finger). I use a bulb syringe that I got with one of those over-priced ear cleaning kits, tilt my head to one side and fill one ear. Then I lie down on my opposite side for 15 minutes and watch some video on my iPod Touch (easier than rotating my TV 90 degrees). Get up (holding towel to ear), rinse with body temperature water, repeat for other ear.

From what I understand, the vinegar is what actually dissolves the wax, and the peroxide is what moves it out of the way.

52

I clicked on it. Dear God, I clicked on it. :eek:

My lavage was warm water, alcohol, and peroxide. The new drops I have are acetic acid. I think I paid $10 for diluted vinegar.

53

gaffa, I don’t know which is more disturbing – that you got that out of your ear or that you felt compelled to take a picture of it.

54

Nightingale, how do you rate clicking on the link? :wink:

55

Many of us appreciate the sharing of that kind of picture.

56

Ooh, when I get home I am so clicking that link. It sounds revolting.

57

Exactly. This thing was so huge that I felt a genuine sense of accomplishment when I saw it in the sink, not unlike a two year old proudly letting Mommy know that he “made a doody”. But this was from an orifice that doesn’t normally produce large brown disgusting objects on a regular basis.

58

Dear Og. It’s horrible. Hideous.

And really cool. It must have been such a relief getting rid of that! Neat pic. Disgusting, but neat.

59

Huh, I been using straight up peroxide with reasonable results; never heard of mixing vinegar in with it. Is it just regular old white vinegar?

60

Oh, I’m mostly just jealous. It must have felt divine to get that thing out of your ear!