ISSUE 8: A CAUTIONARY Q-TIP TALE

Ear-waxing poetic, you could say. Plus, a holiday gift offering!

Hello Oh, That’s Good..ies? Yes, you are.

I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving. If you missed it, last week’s issue was all about the social appropriateness of leaving a fitness class early. Because I did that. Also, the instructor was a true character you have to read about.

Give it a click and read if you missed it!

Let’s get into this week’s issue. The now. And by now, I mean a story about the past…

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Q-TIP HELL: IT HAPPENED TO ME

Raise your hand if you use Q-Tips on a regular basis to clean your ears.

Now raise your hand if you’ve read this warning on the Q-Tip box and then kept using Q-Tips to clean your ears.

a “warning”

Same. Well let me tell you a story that I’ve been harboring for months. The journey I went on, what I thought was happening, and what was actually happening.

Please play the video below before reading on:

Here’s an Earful

It’s late May 2023. The air is just warming up. Summer is on the horizon.

I had just come back from a walk and took a shower, like a little duckling shaking under raindrops rolling off of a large leaf.

I step out of the shower and feel a feeling that only can be described as annoying: there’s water in my ear. Ugh!

Hastily, I tip my head into my towel and try to shake out the drop. It doesn’t budge. Well, whatever, I tell myself. It’ll get absorbed or something.

I move along with my day.

A bit later, I return to the bathroom where I turn on the sink.

To my shock, the water coming out of the faucet sounds like shards of glass grinding across a chalkboard in horrendous symphony.

Oh. My. GOD! I turn it off immediately. I yell.

My boyfriend is concerned, and I describe what has just ensued.

Immediately my brain starts searching for answers.

Is it stress? Did I hear a sonic boom? Am I a dog?

I consider the latter for a moment.

But quickly, I am distracted by the fact that now, all noise sounds piercing. It is unbearable to have ears. I cannot handle any sound.

“It Must Be Stress”

I decide that I have been very stressed lately, and that tense shoulders and teeth grinding has impacted my jaw in such a way that now my teeny tiny ear bones are under the weight of the world, and I’m hearing sounds no human should ever hear. (No, not their parents having sex! Just really loud versions of EVERYTHING.)

I go to an esteemed medical resource for help: Google.

Yes, the internet tells me, it is possible for stress-related hypersensitivity to occur. When you’re under a lot of stress, having anxiety, and your nervous system is taxed, your hearing (as well as other senses) can just feel like wayyyy too much. This hypersensitivity can also be accompanied by tinnitus (ringing) in the ears, which I was experiencing as well. It was so fun!

So, being the holistic health woman I am, I start doing things to support my nervous system. Namely, I go purchase a B-complex.

B-vitamins are shown to support the nervous system as well as energy levels, and when levels are deficient they can, in the example of a Vitamin B12 deficiency, “cause physical, neurological and psychological problems if it is not treated.”

Vitamin B12, an important B vitamin for neurological health, is found in rich amounts in animal sources like eggs, so you may often hear of vegans taking a B12 supplement.

Anyway, so I’m pounding B vitamins. Well, I’m taking the recommended amount. The brand of choice right now is Thorne. It’s not really helping, but maybe it’s kind of helping because I haven’t taken B vitamins for a while and also haven’t eaten eggs for like 6 years.

I needed something else. I needed to bring in the big guns. I needed…acupuncture.

I booked an appointment for that Friday with my favorite acupuncturist in the whole wide world, Portia. Portia is the coolest. And also, as mentioned, the best acupuncturist in the world.

Acupuncture is great for supporting the nervous system, as well as supporting treatment of various symptoms ranging from anxiety to IBS (I have been for both). I’d love to do an issue on acupuncture in the future, so stay tuned on that.

I went to my session and felt a bit better afterward. If anything, I was definitely less stressed than I had been from all the commotion. I got a smoothie to further soothe myself.

In the coming days, things did not get better. I was still incredibly sensitive to sound and at night was having ringing in my ears before I went to sleep. I honestly felt like something was wrong with my brain. It was haunting. I could hear everything all the time, and when there were no sounds, I heard ringing.

By about mid-week, still experience loudness all the time, I decided to go to an urgent care to make sure I didn’t have some rogue ear infection. I had no actual pain in my ears besides the hypersensitivity, and I wasn’t showing any signs of an ear infection but wanted to make sure.

After explaining all my symptoms to the PA, she looked in my ears. My left ear was clear and “looked good,” but my right ear, the one where I’d felt water about a week ago, was impacted with earwax.

“I can’t even see your eardrum,” she said, “because there is so much earwax.”

Immediately, I felt like a gross little monster. But I was reassured there wasn’t an infection, I guess. I was still a gross little monster.

She advised me to go get special ear drops from the pharmacy (just off the shelf) that help clear the wax. I also had to get a special little syringe to squirt water into my ear to flush the loosened earwax. Hot.

Waiting for the Drop

I went to get the drops. I was ready to put an end to the Dolby Atmos sound system that had set up shop inside my head. I was ready to shell out name-brand money for earwax drops, but they were out of the name-brand, so I had to resort to the CVS generic brand of drops.

I brought them home and laid down on the couch. My boyfriend, who is a saint, squeezed ten drops into my clogged ear, and we set a timer for my freedom.

The timer went off, and I tipped my head to the side onto a tissue.

No liquid emerged.

I could still feel the drops in my ear, but they did not budge.

Was the wax harboring the drops?

I put more drops in my ear.

Still, nothing.

This solution that was supposed to help clear this problem. And now I was even more uncomfortable. I knew I had to go see an ear specialist.

If you’ve ever had to make a doctor’s appointment, you know that you can never schedule an appointment for “today.”

Well, because I am convinced I have someone looking out for me up there (see white orb on my shoulder in my aura photo), there was appointment available for that Friday, just two days to go. On the profile for the available practitioner, she had written that her favorite procedure to do was “cerumen removal.” Cerumen means earwax. Folks, I’d truly found my match made in heaven.

A Spiritual Sidenote

When I was experiencing this, I had two people who I shan’t name tell me that the ringing in my ears could be a sign that I was “tapping into higher consciousness” and that I was just “becoming more sensitive to everything” in a spiritual way.

Me, suffering though often woo woo, found this hard to believe. For many reasons. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it here because of how it all played out.

Anyway, onto my WESTERN MEDICINE DOCTOR APPOINTMENT!

me when turning on the faucet hurts my ears

The Truth Revealed

I woke up, ate breakfast, and went to the ENT doctor. After arriving, I sat in the waiting room for nearly an hour. The pain of the wait time alone almost made me forget about the pain of my ears, and I was on the verge of leaving. Finally, they called me back.

A doctor wearing bright blue Hokas (I co-sign, love Hokas) came into the room. She had a very warm demeanor, which is great because I was on my knees (in an emotional sense) and definitely would’ve cried in the hands of a medical ego maniac.

She looked in my ears and confirmed that I did have a complete “cerumen impaction.” She gathered her tools.

The first was a teeny tiny ear vacuum she would first use to suck the ear wax out of the front of my ear canal. Again, hot!

The little Dyson sniffed its way into my ear, and I heard, well, I heard a tiny vacuum sucking ear wax out of my ear. After the immediate blockage was cleared, she looked into my ear again with her otoscope.

“Oh,” she remarked, “You have a Q-Tip stuck in your ear.”

Handling a precise pair of tweezers, she pulled and inch-long cotton tail out of my ear. To my shock, it was still white as the day it went into my ear, which, I have no idea when that was.

“OH MY GOD!!!!” I said. “Is that was has been causing my hearing hypersensitivity??”

“Well, I can’t say with absolute certainty, but let’s just say there is a very good chance that, yes, it was,” she said.

They cleared the rest of the ear wax out of my ear, and we debriefed.

Apparently, when there is a blockage in your ear, your hearing will overcompensate so that you can survive in the wild. Which is pretty cool from an evolutionary standpoint. But my poor ears were working overtime to give me nerve-shattering hearing so I wouldn’t get eaten by a lion because…there was a Q-Tip stuck in my ear.

I was shocked.

To further how disturbing this all was, I asked her how long she thought the Q-Tip was in there, since she had to vacuum wax out of my ear to even see that there was a Q-Tip inside of it.

“At least 3-4 weeks.”

Wow. Honestly, now that I’ve had time to process and think about my own ear wax production, it was at least month, maybe up to two months or longer. I know. It’s gross. But thank god I didn’t have an infection from this!

I went on with my day and after recovering a bit from the mining job that had just occurred in my ear, felt better after a few days. Most importantly, my hearing went back to normal.

AND I told the people who thought I was ascending into “higher consciousness” that the only consciousness I’d ascended into was that I probably shouldn’t be putting Q-Tips in my ears. Woo woo with caution, my babes!

WHAT NOW?

After I told people in my circle about the Q-Tip removal, I learned so much about my friends’ ears and ear-cleaning habits. I learned that some people use Q-Tips, some use other tools, and some have to get earwax professionally removed from their ears regularly. I also learned that my friend Vivian is smarter than all of us because she said, “Oh, I don’t use Q-Tips. Doesn’t it say on the box you’re not supposed to put them in your ear?”

This is why Vivian has a prestigious job in national security, and why I had a Q-Tip stuck in my ear for four weeks.

Now that I’m about five months since the incident, I don’t know what the answer is. I’ve been using a tissue to wipe the outside of my ear canal after I shower, but I have to admit I have used Q-Tips a handful of times (nothing too deep, just right around my ear hole) when I can truly feel the wax just chillin there.

At the ear doctor, they told me you should only clean your ear with something bigger than “the size of an elbow.” Har har har. They also told me that earwax supposedly falls out in your sleep. I have yet to witness this! And I am still convinced that doesn’t happen. :)

It’s all just so funny to me. I think a lot of us use Q-Tips to clean our ears knowing that we aren’t supposed to. It’s like “riiiiiight, we’re ‘not to supposed to use Q-tips’ to clean our ears.” *Does that little dab with a finger on the nose.*

I have not gone back to using Q-Tips fully (and maybe neither should you?), but I can tell you I have not found a better alternative. Honestly, I haven’t really tried any alternative because I am terrified to stick anything in my ear ever again.

But maybe just the tip.

Do you use Q-Tips? Do you have a better alternative to Q-Tips? Has something like this happened to you? Let’s discuss.

RELEVANT CONTENT

My friend Isabel Klein (also a reader of OH, THAT’S GOOD — hey girl!) recently made a video about this entire Q-Tip conundrum and maybe re-traumatized me. And that’s quality content. :)

isabel_klein

A post shared by @isabel_klein

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SPECIAL HOLIDAY GIFT OFFERING

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THAT’S ALL FOR NOW

Thanks again for reading this week!

I’d love it if you could share this newsletter with someone you think would love it.

Don’t forget to leave a comment, and have a great rest of your week!

And don’t use Q-Tips!

This post was sponsored by Q-Tips.

JK, it definitely was not.

LJ