Stop using Q-Tips. Go down to the drugstore & buy yourself an Ear Syringe (sp?). Clean out your ears with that. Better and cheaper, in the long run.
I find that Q-Tips work better than an ear syringe. For me anyway. And no, I’m not packing wax into my ears. The doctors always say I have almost no wax buildup in my ears at all… much to my dismay. I really want one of those big gobs of wax!!!
You’re not alone Opal. I think that’s cool, too. I’ve always had reasonably clear skin, but I will admit to a sort of disgusting fascination along the lines of “it’s dirty - POP - now it’s clean!” 
Okay I know noone asked for this story, but I am going to give it to you anyway.
One morning my hubby comes into the bedroom and wakes me up. He tells me he was taking a Q-Tip to his ear when the cotton broke off in his ear and he needs me to get the tweezers and get it out. Sure enough I look in his ear and the cotton is in there. So I get the tweezers and with no problem am able to remove the cotton.
Now the Q-Tips he was using were not the brand name. They were generic and had a plastic handle. Brand name Q-Tips have a cardboard handle and the cotton stays on it well.
So, here I am the next day cleaning my ears out with the same generic Q-Tips. I know what a dumbass. My hubby was at work and I was home alone. Uh-oh. When I pulled the Q-Tip out of my ear there is no cotton there and I totally went to freaking out.
In a panic, I went to the doctors office very upset. My doctor is checking my ear out and can’t see a thing. I am asking are you sure it’s not way down in there. Yes, I don’t see a thing. I was convinced it was in there and may have went to my brain. Hell I didn’t know? Well her very good looking son was there doing some work and she called him in to clean my ear out. I was soooo mortified. I had to have this thing that looked like a piss pan up to my ear while he flushed it. Never did find the cotton though.
My thought was it may have come out when I pulled the Q-Tip out and may have fell to the floor in doing so. But me being in a panic didn’t take time to look everywhere. Needless to say the doctor said don’t buy the cheap Q-Tips with a plastic handle.
Q-Tips makes a plastic kind too, btw. But yeah, the generics are always way inferior.
Yikes, I didn’t know Q-Tips made the plastic kind. The ones we bought were I believe from the dollar store. Take heed and don’t buy the cheap ones.
I once took a four year old nephew to the doctor for an earache and watched the doctor irrigate three cultured pearls from Mikey’s ear. The doctor suggested we cavity search until wecould make a choker.
You will be soooo jealous (since this thread has morphed into ear stories) when I tell you this:
Elfie, an adorable three-year-old, wonders if Grammy’s shell with the ocean sounds in it is unique. Maybe you can hear pebbles too? So, like any little kid would, she decides to test the theory while at recess at preschool. Uh oh, the pebble falls into her ear! The teacher doesn’t believe her, Mommy doesn’t believe her, the doctors at her check up don’t believe her…no one can see anything, but she can feel it if she pokes her pinky into her ear.
Fast forward eleven years. Elfie, now a high school freshman, gets fairly sick, so she goes to the doctor’s. Part of her problem is that she has a fairly bad infection in her left ear, and she can’t hear well. The doctor takes a look and says " there seems to be something in there." After a few minutes with some really long tweezers she pulls it out: a wax covered pebble! It wasn’t pretty.
My guess is the inflamation from the infection, my first one since toddlerhood, finally pushed it forward enough so someone could see the damn thing. My mother believed me after that :o
ROFL!!
sheepi83, I recommend The Ototek Loop. It was invented by an ear surgeon here in Columbia. I have one and I love the thing.
Opalcat, its really cool because it hooks behind the wax in your ear and you pull it out, then you wipe it off. You really get to see how much junk was in your ear - unlike a Q-tip, where the wax is all smeared into the cotton. That, and it doesn’t shove the wax deeper into your ear.
Hey, informal poll here: do you girls on birth control pills find that you have very little ear wax? I heard from an unrememberable source that this was a side effect and in my case at least it seems to be true.
God that sucks! Hope it’s ok…
mum was going deaf due to a…
even water in my ear is annoyin…
and hope I never need a syrnin…
BTW can you hear me ok?