It was new years eve. After a night of fun and generally clean debauchery, I went with all the good little boys and girls to my warm and comfy bed with thoughts of sleeping undisturbed until sometime in the early afternoon…but peaceful rest was not to be. At a little before 6, my bladder woke me to the reality of the amount of sparkling cider I had drunk. So I unwillingly woke from a rather interesting dream that seemed to involve celebrities catching each other in buildings with locked doors, villain and superhero style, with each attempting to evade the others. Ah, what a beautiful product of my twisted psyche! Anyhow, I quickly tiptoed to the bathroom, relieved my complaining bladder, and sat there for a bit trying to get my thought processes in some sort of coherent order. Damn, there was some sort of wax in my right ear bothering it. Like always I grabbed a Q-tip and proceeded to try and clean it out before returning to my slumber. Ouchies, I started to think that it might be infected, it was kinda swollen. Some of it slipped down more into the ear canal (I love the phrase ear canal you’d think that little wee ships should be moving in and out) and I continued to try and remove the offending wax, only to push it farther in! My frustration mounted, and in dogged and not too intelligent persistence, I continued to probe. Suddenly, there was a slight squishing noise and everything seemed to stop. I paused, then turned around. Nothing. I couldn’t hear from my right ear. The wax had completely plugged the ear canal. More importantly, I COULDN’T HEAR. I’ve been mostly deaf in my left ear since early childhood, owing to a combination of bad genetics and too many ear infections then. But it never bothered me much, as my right ear was just fine. But now…holy shit. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to wake up my parents to I tried to fix it with other small thin objects before realizing the futility of it. That’s when fear and disquiet (ironic, considering it was COMPLETELY quiet) started to set in. I slowly went back to my room with my almost non-existent hearing; only the always horrendously loud (or so I thought normally at night) clanking of the doorknob and the faint rustling of two heavy comforters being lifted reached my ears. No rustling of the socks against carpet, no noises of the house, not even the sounds my baggy pjs make when I walk. Absolute silence. Once in bed and still I began to thoroughly freak out. Not my hearing, no no no. I had told friends before that I’d hate to lose my hearing the most out of all my senses, and now I knew it for absolutely sure. I lay there silently (well as far as I could tell) trying to quell the fear. While lying really still, I could pretend that I hadn’t done anything moronic, that my hearing was still just peachy. In the quiet and stillness, I came upon an epiphany to help keep me sane. I could still hear myself breathing! That meant that there was no ear damage at least, I just needed to get that plug of wax out. But to do that I would have to wait until morning when reduced swelling, coupled with a parent, made freedom from my silence possible. So I was still stuck. That revelation actually started to scare me more because with it I started to feel absolutely trapped in my own head. That, even more than hearing loss, scared the shit out of me. I’d felt quite trapped before, and it was never pleasant, but nothing compared to the limitations of the brain...not even the body, but purely my head. After recovering from the grips of more waves of paranoia, I thought it might be a good idea to record my thoughts on this. So I tried to rise to grab the notebooks that are always by my bed and a pencil, but returned to the near fetal position when realizing the lack of noise my normally racketous (woo! I made a new word!) effort was making. A few more minutes of quaking ensued, followed by a second and successful attempt. Normally, pencil scratching is irritating and loud, but right now I can barely hear it. I think my sister came home, because I heard a few noises that were probably her…if not, I don’t know what else. They weren’t distinct in the least. Now I’m going to hopefully sleep, with my right ear upon the pillow in hopes of gravity freeing the obstruction. I’ll continue upon waking…
Now to part two. The intense paranoia and my lack of control over my own brain made sleep difficult, especially when I somehow induced thoughts of aliens abducting me (god, don’t ask…) into my trains of thought. But eventually I calmed down enough for sleep to take its hold. In the morning, I was woken with the switching on of my light and a muffled voice speaking to me incoherently. I began to mumble incoherently back until I realized that it was my mother, then sat up as she started to leave the room. Yelling for her to come back, she eventually did, and I proceeded to tell her what happened the best I could considering I had been awake for a grand total of 30 seconds. She proceeded to lead me upstairs, where my father was…he was actually home! *gasp!* not hearing much of what was said to me, I eventually was lead to the bathroom sink, where my dad squirted water into my ear with a little thing similar to a turkey baster except smaller. This wasn’t exactly pleasant, and I put up with it in hopes of it freeing me from my bondage of silence. Finally, on the 5th try, it did! My hearing was restored! The water running down the sink was making the noises it was supposed to, and in the sink was a nasty clump of dark brown waxy shit. Eeww. It was the size of the end of my pink from the base of the nail to the tip. No wonder I couldn’t hear!
Well, my unwilling expedition into greater hearing loss was finally remedied. And, it gave me something not really interesting, but something nonetheless to write about. I also learned that there’s a REASON why they say not to stick Q-tips in your ear canal. So here’s today’s lesson- don’t stick Q-tips in your ear canal. And don’t stick confetti down your shirt, even if it is some sort of bizarre version of pass the confetti. It gets stuck everywhere and it itches. Don’t eat the paper kind either, the dye burns your tongue. Well that’s all I’ve learned today, so happy new years!
^.^ Fireflyhotaru
