Oooooooooo doggy!!! I’ve got one hell of an ear infection. It’s amazing how fast it set in. One minute I was fine, 15-20 minutes later, I can’t hear a thing in my right ear, and pain… ooooo the pain. Man… I hope my son doesn’t hurt this badly when he gets ear infections (he probably does though).
Anyway, I’d appreciate any suggestions on how to alieve the pain. I’ve already tried several heat related tricks, and I’ve determined that they suck. I just took some asprin, but it hasn’t had a chance to kick in yet.
Try a product called Star Otic, an over the counter vinegar and glyeric based topical antibiotic product. A similar topical antibiotic over the counter product is made with grapefruit juice and tea tree oil.
I don’t recommend home-made remedies.
Vinegar itself is too strong, and this is an area I don’t experiment with.
Your local pharmacy should have Star Otic, do not use alcohol based products like Auri-Dri which are not antibiotic.
I’m goin for the obvious here – go to the doctor. Ear infections really aren’t something to mess with. Ever had a ruptured ear drum? OOoo, bad. You think you hurt NOW…
The possibility of permanent deafness is there as well. I hate going to the doctor, but I don’t mess around with ear infections.
Another bonus of going to the doctor – there’s a neat little anesthetic drop you can beg for that goes down in the ear. Ooo, this stuff is amazing.
Take 2 aspirins & call your Dr in the morning (if the pain is still intense). A couple of “sudafed” (the little red guys) will really help if your tubes being blocked up ar what is causing the pain.
I would have to agree with Suzanne, see a doctor as soon as possible. A decongestant like Sudafed can help in the meantime, but if the pain gets too intense, I would go to my local ER if you can’t wait to get in to see the doctor.
Also, don’t use any OTC or home remedies (you really shouldn’t use in-the-ear home remedies at all), in your ear several hours before you see the doctor. It can obscure the scope and make it difficult for him to see what is going on down there.
Back in days of old, they would press a hot cooked onion to the ear, I assume because the onion held the heat a long time. Isn’t it unusual for an adult to get an earache? Get to the doctor fast! Kids have earaches all the time, we have gone through my daughter’s weight in antibiotics through the years.
I get ear infuktions a lot cuz I surf a lot. But you know what? They cure themselves. Yep.
Used to be I would ask the doc for some antibiotics. But then I was too lazy for a few of them & what do you know? A day later they cured themselves. Also try some Ibubrofen ASAP as it takes down inflammation.
One thing you can do is pour some hydrogen peroxide in the infected ear a couple of times throughout the day. It will help draw out the infection and it doesn’t hurt at all. Take a couple of Tylenol or something so the pain will stop too. You can use the hydrogen peroxide for a couple of days and if it isn’t feeling any better, then I would go to the doctor. Try the hydrogen peroxide first… lot cheaper than an office visit and antibiotic and it works.
Well, if you’re lucky the bug will eat its way all the way through your brain and immerge out the other ear. Make sure to examine it. If it’s a male, you’ll be okay, but if it’s a female…well…
I’m with handy, on this one. I get earaches all the time. The one thing you can count on is that they will eventually cure themselves. Just try not to sleep with your ear to the pillow. In other words, keep your ears vertical, not horizontal.
STOP WITH THE HEAT! That’s how they used to get better when the cure for an ear ache was a ruptured ear drum. (They do heal back. My baby’s eardrum just ruptured 3 weeks ago before I could get her into a dr.) Why are you avoiding a dr.? Do you have a Nurse Practitioner available to you? Sometimes that’s a faster and cheaper route.
Now, is this an inner, middle, or outer ear infection? See you need to know that to know your course of action. Decongestants will help ease the pressure of a middle ear infection. My husband just had an infection in his ear canal. That took ear drops to make it feel better. (If it’s inner ear, you wouldn’t bother asking us, because you probably couldn’t sit at the keyboard to type your question.)
And I’ve had several ear infections that I did not require antibiotics to cure. I did however need a strong decongestant like Tavis-D (or is it Tavist? Anyway, that stuff). A GP let me in on that secret. Then I had one that cured itself before I knew about decongestants. I developed it on a Saturday, was in great pain. I was very eager to go to the dr. on Monday. Early Monday morning before the sun came up, a very strong low pressure system passed through and it allowed all of that stuff to drain. No one believes me, BTW, so you don’t have to either. But it’s the TRUTH.
My right ear’s been bugging me off and on for around two years now. It kinda goes away, comes back, repeat cycle. My hearing isn’t affected by it, at least not yet. The only thing that really seemed to help it was penicillin, but doctors seem reluctant to prescribe good ol’ penicillin these days. Tetracycline just made me nauseous without working on my ear at all. Anyone wanna set me up with about 120 tabs of penicillin so I can kick this thing for good?
Hydrogen peroxide is a great way to clean out your ears…it kinda tickles when it fizzes. When I went to the doc the first time for the ear, she told me I just had impacted ear wax. After a few treatments with peroxide, a really nasty clump of wax came out, but the pain didn’t fade.
I’m gonna keep watching this thread…I’d really like to get this taken care of once and for all.
Max, have you ever been told that you don’t have a proper bite or that you grind your teeth in your sleep? (I can’t believe you’ve had an ear infection for 2 years! Do you have fevers and chills?) I went to the dr. with an “ear infection” in high school and he told me that I have TMJ syndrome. He sent me to my dentist. My dentist was just getting into the TMJ thing so he used me as a guinea pig and made me a mouth piece (for free) to wear while I slept. It worked great! Cured my ear ache after several months of wearing it. I bit it in half in my sleep the night before my wedding and haven’t needed one since too much. Sometimes I still need some massage in my jaw area if I’m really tense about something. In the meantime, if this is your problem, use heat on the jaw muscles, anti-inflamatories like advil or aspirin, and see if you can’t get someone to rub your facial and neck muscles, especially those involved in chewing. Warning: if this is the problem, the massage will take a really long time and many, many sessions. If it hurts so that you think your ear hurts, you’re way out of wack.
Go to your doctor - I had an bad earache that eventually went away, but would come back again. It was actually a tumor, and had to be surgically removed. The tumor could have worked it’s way into my brain. It destroyed the hearing in my right ear by eating away those three little bones that vibrate. Even if it is an ordinary, run of the mill ear ache, you are much better off letting your doctor decide that.
Okay, wanna hear something gross? I knew you would. True story follows:
My Grandma’s sister had a nasty ear infection when she was little (early 1900s–she’d be close to ninety if she were alive). Her mom had her urinate into a cup. She then took the pee and poured it into my aunt’s ear. Aunt Mary was pretty disgusted, but she let her mom do it. She swore that she never had an earache in that ear again. My aunt offered this advice to me once when I had a sore ear. I went with the peroxide.
OK, this is also gross, but since you say the pain is intense & hit you suddenly… is there any chance a small insect might have crawled into your ear canal?
When I was little, I woke up one night with intense, stabbing pain in one ear that was enough to bring tears to my eyes. My dad put some ear drops in my ear, then plugged it up with a bit of cotton. The pain faded, I went back to sleep… when I woke up in the morning & took the cotton out of my ear, there was a small (drowned) ant sitting on the cotton. The little bastard must have crawled in and started biting, hence the pain.
I’ve had a few ear infections and have treated quite a few, all successfully. (Well, they DID all get better.) Here are some things you need to know:
The treatment depends on whether you have otitis media (middle ear infection) or otitis externa (external ear infection or "swimmer’s ear) or something else. (See SoMoMom post.)
In general (repeat, in general) small kids get otitis media and teenagers and adults get swimmer’s ear.
In general (do I need to say it again) otitis media comes with a fever and the pain is NOT made worse by chewing or pulling on the outer ear. In general, otitis externa is not accompanied by fever and chewing or pulling on the outer ear DOES cause pain.
The treatment for otitis media is controversial. When I had ear aches as a child in the 1950s, I got aspirin and a hot water bottle. I don’t know if that worked. (It was cheap.) Now kids get acetominophen (Tylenol and others) plus expensive antibiotics. The amount of money spent on antibiotic treatment of otitis media in children in the U.S. is so great that the government has spent millions trying to figure out if antibiotics really help. I don’t know. However, according to Paddy O’Neil writing about the treatment of acute otitis media in children in “Clinical Medicine, a compendium of the best available evidence for effective health care” issue 2, Dec 1999, BMJ Publishing Group and the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine: “Evidence from systematic reviews of RCTs [randomized controlled trials] is conflicting. The more recent and inclusive review has found that antibiotics reduce the proportion of children still in pain at 2-7 days and the risk of developing contralateral AOM [acute otitis media in the other ear], but have no immediate beneficial effect in terms of reduced pain within 24 hours, and no long term effect in terms of rates of subsequent attacks or deafness at one month. Rates of adverse effects are almost doubled in children on antibiotics compared with placebo. There is no clear evidence favouring a particular antibiotic.” On the other hand, I am told that serious complications of otitis media such as mastoiditis have become rare in the antibiotic era. Also, it must take a stalwart physician to refrain from prescribing antibiotics for the feverish, screaming child of a distraught mother.
The situation is not much more clear with the treatment of swimmer’s ear. I have seen various watery preparations of dilute acetic acid (e.g., Burow’s solution, home made mixtures containing vinegar, etc.) with or without hydrocortisone as well as various viscous preparations containing an assortment of antibiotics, steroids, and/or topical anesthetics. A skeptic might take the fact that there are so many different products on the market as prima facie evidence that none of them works all that well. I, personally, favor products that are relatively simple and, preferably, cheap. A dilute acetic acid solution is not likely to do much harm.
Swimmer’s ear can, rarely, be severe. Sometimes the lining of the ear canal becomes so inflamed that the ear is swollen shut. Sometimes green pus drains out of the ear… I don’t even want to even think about it. If that happens, see a doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician’s assistant.
What a doctor, nurse practitioner, or physician’s assistant can do for you that you can’t is look inside your ear to see what’s going on. In otitis media, the canal should be normal but the ear drum is often red and bulges outward. In swimmer’s ear, the ear drum is normal but the canal may be red, swollen, and tender. The MD, NP, or PA can also remove insects and other dreck from the ear.
There are many other causes of ear pain besides otitis media and swimmer’s ear but they are much less common. Besides insects in the ear and holes made by the injudicious use of paper clips, etc., there is an infection that causes blisters on the ear drum (“bullous myringitis”). Sudden onset of severe ear pain with partial loss of hearing is consistent with the course of bullous myringitis. This is supposed to be so painful I don’t even want to think about it.
I hope you are feeling better soon.
It hurts to be reminded of that. I had a swimmer’s ear infection 3 years ago. I figured it would go away on its own. It didn’t; it got much worse. My ear canal was completely swollen shut, so even the anesthetic drops couldn’t deaden the pain.
It felt like an ice pick in the ear–no joke.
I was out of work for a couple of days until the antibiotics knocked the infection down a bit. In the mean time, I gobbled Tylenol-3’s.
Then…big fun…it somehow migrated to the other ear for round two. Back on medication, back on pain pills.
