Week 99: Unusual ear anatomy
This week’s weeknotes are a little personal. I hope you forgive the oversharing.
For several years my hearing had been getting slowly worse. Not so bad that I couldn’t hear at all, but enough that I would miss things if people weren’t speaking directly to me, and wouldn’t wake up when my kids made a noise in the middle of the night. Worse in one ear than the other. Worse whenever I got a cold. And bouts of tinnitus. But manageable.
I knew I should probably get it checked but I never got around to it.
And then a few weeks ago I got hit by some kind of viral flu type thing, which meant a day of fatigue but a big deterioration in hearing, even once recovered.
This meant I could no longer hear the television. I had to keep asking people to repeat things. And hushed conversations in the office were so unintelligible that I took to just nodding along. One ear was also quite painful at times. Everything sounded muffled and disconnected.
I phoned the Islington’s extended hours GP service (easier to access than my regular GP!) and was invited in for an appointment within the hour.
I feared an ear infection, but the GP took a look in both ears and told me it was likely just ‘impacted’ wax in the inner ear. She couldn’t even see the ear drums.
She drew me a cross section picture of the ear to show what was happening and explained that “some of us are wax producers and others aren’t”. The wax is there to help prevent infection but it can get pushed into the inner ear where it then won’t naturally escape from.
Did I put cotton wool buds in my ear, she asked. No. Did I use earbud headphones? Ah… Yes. Almost all day, in every one of the many video calls.
She prescribed me some ear spray to reduce the inflammation, and then suggested using olive oil drops daily for about a week before getting microsuction. This is a treatment available now in many pharmacies and opticians. I’d heard of it before but had been nervous to try it. But the GP reassured me that it’s safe and effective. She’d had it regularly herself, and recommended a company who specialise in it.
I duly followed the instructions and booked an appointment for a week or so’s time.
When I arrived the clinician looked into my ears with their head mounted magnifying glass and confirmed that the ears were complete blocked. But he seemed confident that he’d be able to clear them.
Half an hour later, in which I was told under no circumstances to move my head, and after much effort from him, it was done. He told me I had unusual ear anatomy, with a very narrow ear canal, and it’d been the hardest pair of ears he’d treated for 3 years. But the right ear was now completely clear and the left ear 90% clear.
As I walked out of the clinic the difference was immediately noticeable. I could hear the water lapping against the dock of Canary Wharf. I could heard distant sounds of road traffic. I could hear the background conversations of all the strangers around me. It was almost overwhelming, as if noise suppression had been turned off in a video call.
It seemed to take a couple of days for my brain to readjust and be able to mentally filter out irrelevant sounds again.
Of course the biggest benefit was being able to hear the voices of my family and friends more clearly. To be able to participate in more conversations.
It’s not perfect. I still get a bit of tinnitus and one ear is better than the other. But I’m very grateful for the vast improvement.
I’m not sure if there’s a moral of this story. I guess I probably followed the classic health pattern of waiting too long before getting help. I’m sure this can be mapped to the COM-B model of behavioural change, or something. Prevention is harder than reaction.
Tinnitus and hearing loss affect a lot of people. Microsuction is now more widely available, but often not on the NHS for some reason. I think it probably should be.
I bought a pair of over-ear headphones and no longer use earbud ones.
Regular work-related weeknotes will resume next week.