I ruptured my right eardrum back around 1986 while I was down about 60 feet deep in a freshwater quarry during scuba diving training in PA. This put an abrupt end to my hopes of becoming a dive master unfortunately.
Actually I never did get an official diagnosis from a doctor, lacking any medical insurance at the time, having been fairly broke since college graduation about three year's earlier. All I remember is that I felt a sharp pain in my right ear and then blood was flowing out of it and I then became somewhat - though not completely - deaf in that ear.
The bleeding eventually stopped, but my hearing came back about 50% and remained about that level in the years that followed. Years became decades. A few weeks ago I became completely deaf in that same ear, drastically affecting my daily life. I got sick of saying "what?" all the time, so I went to a FNP (family nurse practitioner) during a visit to my adopted home town of Nashville, TN recently on unrelated business.
I had originally stopped by an M.D. office in the same strip mall, but judging from the opulence of the waiting room itself and the attitude of the receptionist, they obviously were so dependent on insurance that I immediately got the sense I was about to incur a huge doctor bill if I were to go through the whole nine yards of bullshit they were about to hand me in the way of exams, tests, MRI's and the like. I said thanks, but no-thanks and cruised one door down to a FNP's office, with which I had no previous experience, but had heard good things about.
It was called the Xai Family Medical Clinic". A paper sign on the door read, "walk-ins welcome". I had a feeling this was the right place for affordable care! A slightly built Asian man was the only one on duty. He was the nurse!
I informed him of my lack of insurance and he said, "no problem. We charge $65.00. How is that?" I said that would be fine. He then had me fill out a short one-page health history and promptly brought me back to the examination room. He gave me a short bio of his resume. It turns out that he had worked all over the world and had ten year's experience as a nurse! This made me feel better.
He also said that he had some experience working on ears. Good enough for me. Anything beats myself sticking a tweezers in my ear in the bathroom mirror, trying to pull out whatever it was that had been blocking my ear canal for a good two decades plus!
He then brought out a big plastic syringe, a jug of water and a curved plate for me to hold under my ear. This should be interesting.....
He told me that "this will probably hurt". I said, "okay fine". He then inserted the narrow tip of the syringe into my ear and proceeded to irrigate it with a fair amount of water pressure until it spilled out of my ear and into the curved plate, along with some small red chunks. "Blood clots" he said. Yes, it did hurt, a lot, but I was ready to go for broke at this point. I was glad at least, to see something come out of my ear.
After about four more irrigations he had managed to dislodge a number of chunks of debris from inside my ear canal. He said that the rest was in too deep and needed to be softened up first before I would be able to make more progress. He then prescribed this over the counter product and said that I would probably need to treat with it three days in a row before I completely cleaned the ear canal.
Needless to say, this stuff worked like a charm! I picked some up at Walgreens and treated it again the next day, excited that the FNP had actually found something in my ear. I put the drops in and laid on my side on the couch for about 20 minutes. I could feel the stuff bubbling deep inside my ear. I then got up and used the provided rubber syringe over the sink to force a jet of water deep inside my ear canal. I was encouraged when several large red chunks washed out of my ear. After a while nothing further came out, so I put things on hold until the next night.
Night number two was discouraging because I only managed to dislodge some small chunks-nothing major. I still had no hearing in that ear. Perhaps I should use 15 drops instead of the recommended 10 drops of Debrox? I also made a mental note to use hot water next time for the irrigation process.
Night number three came and I anxiously applied 15 drops of Debrox to my sore ear canal and laid down for 30 minutes this time. Then I went to the sink where I drew very warm-almost hot water from the faucet and sucked it up with the syringe. I stuck the tip deep in my ear canal and squeezed- pretty hard. The hot water rushed into my ear, but it hurt so good, because several large chunks came out of my ear and suddenly......I could hear, clear as a bell too, for the first time since 1986.
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| Blood clots in my ear since the mid-1980's..... |
