"You're gonna need to see an Eye Doctor before your next physical", said Dr. Rich.
And I knew it before he said it.
I can still see distant things just fine, but stuff at mid-distances is not so clear as it used to be, and reading charts at night requires me to pull out my "Must possess" reading glasses.
Now I'm noticing those glasses improve my vision in that mid-distance range a little too.
Man I hate gettin' old!
Thanks to my paternal grandfather, I have always been blessed with excessive earwax. Before I knew you weren't supposed to stick anything in your ear canal smaller than a volleyball, I would intermittently stick a cotton swab down in there and give it a twirl. (Funny, in spite of the "volleyball" warning, that never seemed to cause any problems!)
Inevitably, that swab would come out covered, and dark brown like... well, we won't go there.
When I found out I was only supposed to be using volleyballs I quit using the swabs.
Now I'm either producing more junk in my ears, or I need to break the rules and start using the swabs once again. Remember, I use those little foam earplugs? On three different occasions in recent years I have compacted the wax against my eardrum by pushing those earplugs into place. (For whatever reason, it always seems to be my right ear causing the problem.) It happened again two weeks ago, and I've been unable to hear with that ear since. Sara Jean and I just solved the problem... I held my head over the kitchen sink and she sprayed water as hot as I could stand it into that ear. Now I don't have to continue lip-reading... (which is hard to do via radio, believe me!)
Nearly deaf. Goin' blind. Dumb? I've been called worse.
I'm ready to apply for that job as "Pinball Wizard"!
4 comments:
Greybeard . . . Misery loves company. I too was blessed with too much ear wax. What a pain. In my case the cotton swabs usually work to clear 80 to 90% when used very carefully. The remaining wax can be softened and made liquid by repeated drops of hydrogen peroxide. If that doesn't do the job I get a earwax kit from the druggist AND KEEP THE LITTLE BLUE BULB FOREVER. That thing can be filled with very warm water and squirted gently into the ear. It tends to "melt" the last bit of hard to get stuff and return your ears to normal. Pain in the neck isn't it. You might want to check with your doctor before trying this method. Doctor's tend not to like, as you say, anything smaller than a volleyball in there. There must be a reason.
Bump
My sister is deep into "organic" food, "fair trade" coffee, and all sorts of alternative medicine & massage that come with this mindset.
Somewhere in that menagerie of concocted uses for hemp, quack home cures & "cleansing" foods is a process of pouring a special wax (molten) into the ear canal, letting it harden a few minutes, then pulling it out. The process is designed to remove ALL built up wax and foreign matter in the ear.
Boy oh boy does it work!
A few enquiries to your nearest alternative/grass roots type person should put you on the track to obtaining a supply of this wax.
...I think I'm going to barf.
They have kits for cleaning out ears! You need to be careful about spraying stuff into them. A ruptured eardrum isn't fun and would keep you out of the air, wouldn't it?
cjh
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