Today I got sucked off. And by that I mean I had all the wax noisily hoovered out of my ears by a nice lady at Boots.
I'd been dealing with a sporadic issue with my right ear for a while. It started during a holiday a few years back, where Andie and I spent a few days away in Bournemouth. Bournemouth is not far away from where we live, but it is far enough away that it felt like a nice holiday, so we thought we'd just do it. It was nice.
Apart from one day, where I'd spent some time in the pool, got an ear full of water — nothing unusual there, it's happened before — but then, after attempting to empty out the water, my ear was just sort of… stuck. I don't really know exactly what was going in there, but it felt like someone had glued it shut. No amount of wriggling it around, poking it, wanging my hand over it and making farty noises with it and stuffing things into it unblocked it, causing me a not-inconsiderable amount of concern that I might have just suddenly gone deaf.
I had not, in fact, suddenly gone deaf, and the blockage, stickiness, whatever it was, disappeared naturally after a while. But ever since, I have had infrequent episodes of it coming back, usually brought on by sleeping or lying on it. Finally, I decided that I should probably do something about it, and looked into "getting my ears syringed", which is something I knew people had done sometimes, but which didn't sound very pleasant and consequently was something I had been putting off investigating further. (Fun fact: according to Andie, who has had it done in the past, it's actually quite a pleasant experience.)
I discovered during my investigations that one does not simply get one's ears syringed any more. Aside from the fact that apparently you can't just go to your doctor and get it done any more — I increasingly find myself wondering exactly what the police, fire service and medical professionals are actually doing all fucking day these days, with all the things they "don't do any more" — the practice has apparently fallen out of favour, to be replaced with a procedure known as "microsuction". Which is exactly what it sounds like; someone sticks a tube in your ear which sucks really hard, and all the goopy horrible wax comes plopping out a bit at a time.
I went for my initial appointment just before we went away on holiday, and my left ear got cleared out nicely, but my right ear apparently had some hardened, awkwardly positioned wax that was a bit close to my ear drum for the nice lady to go poking and sucking around. As such, she suggested I spend the next week and a bit dribbling olive oil into my ear (it really works, as ridiculous as it sounds) and then come back for the job to get finished. She even only charged me for half the appointment on that first occasion.
Today, I went back for the follow-up appointment, half-expecting the various concoctions I have dribbled into my right ear over the course of the last week and a half to not have had all that much of an effect. But thankfully, they had. And the (different) nice lady who took me through the whole process this time was highly entertaining.
I suspect that she may have been an exorcist in a previous life, because when surveying my lugholes prior to getting the sucking started, she caught herself referring to the "streaks of darkness". Then, while the process was ongoing, she gleefully announced that "the darkness is being released! The darkness is coming!" which I found exceedingly amusing but had to try not to laugh because it's best not to jiggle around too much when someone has a powerful suction device inserted into your head.
Anyway, long story short, all the disgusting goop that was in my ears is now in the revolting receptacle at the base of the machine (bet it's fun emptying that out) and, after the initial temporary mild deafness brought on by the screeching, bubbling sounds of disgusting goop being sucked out of my ears into a machine, hopefully that will prevent any further auditory mischief, at least for the immediate future.
It was £65 for the whole process, which sounds pricy, but the service was helpful, respectful (exorcist-style comments aside) and informative. If you've never had your ears cleaned out by someone who knows what they're doing, I can recommend the experience, particularly if you've ever had a gummed-up weird sticky ear issue like I've had. I am looking forward to (hopefully) not experiencing that again for a while!
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.
Discover more from I'm Not Doctor Who
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
