Now Hear This
October 31, 2010
My primary care physician is great. I have been going to him since, while substituting for my regular doctor, he ordered an emergency appendectomy. The wrong call might have meant there would be no me and no 70-something.com.
But my last visit to him didn't have such a great outcome. He was a little too zealous in removing some ear wax. That caused a bit of bleeding in my ear, so he prescribed some antibiotic ear drops as a precaution against infection. From that moment on, my left ear felt clogged.
I made an appointment with a physician assistant a few days later—she couldn't figure out what was wrong. And that is why I found myself at the ENT doctor's office Wednesday. First they gave me a hearing test. For those who haven't suffered through one, don't do it if you are claustrophobic. You have to sit in a dark phone-booth-like space, listen to various sound levels of beeping, and push a button when you hear something for what seems like hours.
Next I had my appointment with the ENT doctor. She found a blockage in the affected ear, caused by some ear wax and some flakes from—you guessed it—the antibiotic eardrops!
She was able to remove it all with a minimum of pain, but then she decided that to be sure, she should look at my ear canal with her fiber-optic gadget. This required numbing my nose with some foul-tasting spray, and threading this thing with a light on its end through my nose to my eardrum. She told me I have a "beautiful" eardrum.
With my unclogged ear, I rushed back to work.
Just another day at the office.