My daughter turned 6 this week and I just took her to the doctor for her annual checkup and to get her shots.
In the course of the examination the doctor said that she had impacted wax in her ears. I wasn’t totally surprised, that kid has been producing enough wax since she was born to light up a thousand Catholic churches. At least three times a week I clean her ears and get lentil-size chunks of dark wax from her ears. Of course I don’t go digging around as it is not recommended by doctors.
The doctor decided to “wash” her ears. Let me tell you, it took about 30 minutes of washing, and about 8 oz of whatever liquid it is he uses (peroxide?) to get her eardrums clear. At the end he got two bean-sized chunks of black, dry wax out of her right ear and one bean-size chunk from the left ear.
I just didn’t think that was possible. I am trying to figure out how big and deep the ear canal is to accommodate that amount of wax. She says she can hear better, but you cannot nuanced commentary from a 6 year old.
So, from now on she has to have her ears checked every six months, seeing as her ears don’t seem so good at cleaning themselves as they are at producing wax. Amazingly she never complained of ear pain and has never had an ear infection.
Any other walking wax factories out there? How do you deal with it.
Only when I was a kid. I grew out of it. And, even then, it wasn’t that bad.
I have a second cousin who had tubes in his ears as an infant, and they didn’t fall out like they were supposed to, and the doctors didn’t discover this until he was five. He’s rather speech delayed due to not being able to hear. You are quite fortunate that this doesn’t sound like the case with your daughter.
drug stores have ear wax cleaning kits, an ear syringe (soft rubber bulb with long soft rubber tip, can’t go in too far) and solution of glycerin/peroxide. the glycerin softens and the peroxide helps loosen. you use lukewarm water in the syringe, inserting into the canal, to give physical force to flush out the softened loosened wax. can totally clean the ear to the eardrum.
you can also get an ear wax rake. a hard plastic loop on a handle that has a guard to prevent insertion too far. you can rake out wax that is to the outside (3/4")
drug stores also have inexpensive totally plastic otoscopes which you can do inspections of her ears.
Not only is she quite the chatterbox (sometimes I wish I were deaf), but she speaks three languages with a degree of fluency above kids her age. I am completely astounded she wasn’t totally deaf.
Hmm, I didn’t think it would work, it was hyperbole.
I am researching on a kit to buy, I don’t think that we should wait six months if she can get that much wax in a year.
I wish I had taken a picture, but I was busy trying to find my jaw on the floor. It was disgusting, yet fascinating. Mostly disgusting. My daughter’s reaction? “Ewwwwww, cool!”
I have had my ears cleaned out by the doctor a few times and each time produced what amount to about 3/4" of wax in each ear. Usually the cause of the visit was a slight aching in my ears, but nothing more then that. I remember my parents washing out my ears when I was a kid with something that looked like a water pick.
I also have never had an ear infection and my hearing had never been seriously effected. I don’t notice things are a bit louder after getting them cleaned out, but it isn’t something I notice until after the cleaning.
When I was a kid, I had to have my ears flushed several times. It didn’t hurt but having that syringe of water go into my ear made me so dizzy. I would hate it so much as the room would be spinning around, but I did make a lot of wax in my ears
I find that plain old olive oil in the ear canal softens the wax just fine. I put some in at night before I go to bed with a bit of a cotton ball to help it stay in there. The next day I use that little ear syringe ball thing I got at the pharmacy while in the shower and wash the wax out with warm shower water.
You do get used to the warm water on the eardrum eventually, but it’s safer to do it sitting down in the beginning.
Every single time I have had my ears flushed at the doctors it has caused me a lot of pain. The bulb syringe thing does not hurt at all.
Lastly, after cleaning I use a solution of 1/4 alcohol to 3/4 vinegar drops in each ear to avoid swimmers ear.
I had a lot of wax in my ears as a kid and had a similar experience with a doctor cleaning out my ears. My mom couldn’t believe the amount of wax that came out, either. She had to periodically clean out my ears with a kit from the store, but eventually I just grew out of it.
About once a month mrAru fills each ear canal with peroxide and I get to enjoy bed spins and bubblies until the bubblies stop and I drain the ear out and do the other side.
Why yes, I do enjoy bed spins, I do not get motion sick ever and enjoy the spins. Only time I ever got motion sick it wasn’t my fault, I was 3 days old and Dad was flying Mom and I home in the piper cub, she fed me, he hit turbulence and I yarped used milk all over the cockpit. Dad traded the piper in for a comanche as ‘we needed the room for the kids’ <giggle>
But I think I had the same thing when I was a little kid. Solved by Ear Tubes.
Did the doctor recommend those? Kids gotta hear, after all. They were fairly minimal for me - I remember being scared as hell going into the “operation”, but had no negative experiences after.
When I was a kid, I had chronic cerumen impactions.
The first time I had tubes put in my ears I was 7 years old and had been deaf for at least 18 months. I had taught myself to read lips and no one knew I couldn’t hear until a visit to the doctor for an earache led to tests. The doctor told my mom by standing behind me and telling her “he can’t hear what I’m saying right now”.
I lost my hearing again in high school, and again had tubes put in. My first couple of days of hearing were damn near terrifying. I had no idea what birds sounded like or that car engines were so freaking loud.
Today, I have fairly good hearing, with slightly better hearing in my left ear than in my right. I can still read lips, tho I don’t advertise the fact; it comes in handy now and then.
I am not one, but my maternal grandmother, my dad and my younger brother are. That bro and I inherited Dad’s ultra-weeny ear canals.
Whenever Dad realized he needed to set the TV’s volume higher than usual, he hied himself to the ear doctor. Bro does the same once a year. Grandma has been told her tinnitus may come in part from all those years of not wanting to go to the ear doctor when her daughters told her to - Mom has some epic histories of Grandma’s Ear Wax, but they’re recent ones because the woman simply wouldn’t go to the doctor.
Treatment for Dad/Grandma would be along the lines of:
doc tries to clean patient’s wax off and manages only partial success
patient is sent home and caretaker is ordered to use oil as ear drops on patient for several days (about a week), use a cottonette to gently clean outer ear and outer part of the ear canal after the oiling
patient goes back to doctor, who can now clean ear canal.
Steps two and three have had to be repeated, some times (I think Grandma’s Big Cleaning of 2003 took five visits - she hadn’t been to a doctor since getting her gallbladder out in '92).
Bro and I use cottonettes (carefully!) after showering/bathing (pool too); if there are any wax lumps we can feel by touch, we oil the cottonette to attack that one (still carefully, by “attack” I mean “go over it repeatedly”, not “poke”). He hasn’t needed to do steps 2 and 3 above since his first visit to the ear doctor.
ETA: I think part of the reason oil’s involved is that nowadays Spanish homes aren’t so likely to have peroxide, but they will have oil.
My daughter is exactly the same. Interestingly, it seemed to have no impact on her hearing either. We just last month took her for a hearing test due to some other symptoms, and she passed with flying colours. Then we went into the next room where the doctor removed three huge, hard black chunks like you describe from each ear.
We’ve always been told to put olive oil in, and we try, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference. This particular doctor said to warm it, put it in, wait a minute or so, then have her tip it out for a couple of minutes, which is more involved than we’d been doing, so we’ll see if that helps.
(and my daughter’s reaction to the boulders scraped out of her ear? “Eeeww! AWESOME!” :))
This happened to my littlest sister as a kid. We thought she was going deaf when she was two or three years old… but it was just giant balls of wax. She got her ears irrigated every six months for years, at the doctor because her ear holes were so tiny. She’s 18 now and has no more wax problems, oddly.
My dad always had a lot of wax too (and a long history of severe ear infections, had tubes when he was a kid), he usually takes care of it himself using hydrogen peroxide which loosens it up enough that it would come out with patience and lots of time spent with his ear over the sink.
The olive oil works best with the head tilted sideways (do one ear, clean it, do the other one), but the “warm” should merely be “room temperature without a/c”, afaik.
I went in for a checkup and the doc checked my ears, washed out what he thought was an amazing amount of wax. I didn’t hear any better afterwards, or worse before. I clean my ears like anybody else, but have no idea how you’re supposed to look in there and see if you need a washout, expecially if it’s not affecting hearing at all. I don’t worry about it unless I notice hearing loss; this HAS happened twice, the first time to both ears and I was just about deaf before I realized you could use a bulb and hydrogen peroxide and bammo, all better. That was always caused by using earplugs to sleep, especially in the heat.
No, ear tubes wouldn’t have any effect on ear wax; they’re used if you’ve had a lot of ear infections. I think the deal is that since they let air into the middle ear, it’s easier for fluid inside the ear / eustachian tubes to drain out inside. Sort of like when you put a drinking straw in your soda, and put your finger over the top and lift it - the liquid can’t drain because of air pressure. The tubes have the same effect as removing your finger from the straw.
I’ve never had my ears irrigated but there was one time where I was having actual ear pain because of the buildup (they recommended drops, which helped), and another time where an ENT was looking and had to remove a chunk of wax. That was actually painful - not sure but it sure felt like he JABBED A SPIKE into the eardrum. I was surprised I could still hear afterward :p.
My son, 5, generates a lot of wax. He had to have his ears washed out with a machine that looked a lot like a water pick. He was 3 at the time, and it was one of the most horrific experiences I’ve had with him. I had to hold him in a bear hug while he screamed and they washed his ears. I was four months pregnant and already a basket case; hearing him scream like that was awful. I’m sure it wasn’t terribly comfortable for him, either, having his mother hold him down like that.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t finished with the shots yet, so he had two shots afterward, too, which required that I pin him to the exam table.
The ear wax plug that came out of his ear was enormous and exactly the shape of his ear canal. It was nearly black and absolutely disgusting.
I now check his ears regularly to make sure he’s not getting any buildup. Ever since that little episode, he hates having anything in his ears, water especially. I wish I could give you advice, but it sounds like your little girl handled the whole thing well.
