Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Do you hear what I hear?


Freshly removed ear wax just slightly bigger than half a dime.

On a weird real life imitates art note, A few days ago I was visiting Darryl and watched a movie called "It's all gone, Pete Tong". It's a movie about a DJ that looses his hearing and how he copes and doesn't cope with the hearing loss. After watching the movie my left inner ear started feeling scratchy.

Over the course of the next few days it felt like I was under water, left ear only until by boxing day I'd say I could only hear about 20% of the sounds getting into my ear. I tried using the phone on the left side of my head then the right side to compare. Water, Q-tips, my finger, they didn't really seem to do anything. I decided to go to a medical center.

An interesting note. Not a lot of medical centers are opened just after Christmas. At least not along Danforth as I walked by a few. Eventually I got to one near Main street (just a bit east on the south side). There I waited in a relatively small line up to see the next available doctor.

What is it about doctors offices that they have to be so grey with fluorescent lighting? And everyone seems glum. Well okay if somethings wrong with you you might be a be a wee bit glum. I suppose that's understandable. I guess I was just happy to know a doctor was on the job until 8pm and that I could find out what the heck was wrong with my hearing.

After sitting on the standard doctor bench/table the doctor, a very friendly individual I might add considering he was working the holiday week, looked into my ear, then my other ear (the good one). He then used the little plastic scoop (see picture above) to pull out an extremely large piece of ear wax.

"Holy Cow!" was my reply. He didn't seem that phased and bragged that he pulled out a piece of crud three times that big out of another patients ear. The doctor was pretty cool as he let me gape in awe and asked if I wanted it as a souvenir. I told him "no" but I did want a picture of it. As he prescribed some Sandoz Pentasone for a minor ear infection I shot a few pictures with my camera.

I was a bit worried when he asked if I had any insurance. My brain raced as I thought I was going to be gouged to buy the stuff. In the end the medication ended up being about $22 for a weeks worth. That wasn't too bad. More importantly I got my hearing back.

3 comments:

theotherbear said...

OMG. That is the most off thing I have seen for a while. I should be grateful you didn't have a blocked bottom problem and need an enema - that's the only thing I can think of that would be more gross, and I reckon you'd take photos of that too!

Cupcake said...

Ewwwwww!

Zee said...

That's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. You ever heard of Q-Tips? Regular cleaning of the ears can prevent a massive buildup like that disgusting thing. I never want to see that again.