Juliet England: Why we need to talk about ear wax removal – The Limping Chicken

Let’s face it, ear wax is hardly the most attractive substance.

Getting rid of the stuff, however, can be brilliantly satisfying. Every time I’ve presented myself at my surgery for syringing, I’ve walked away afterwards with my sparkling clean ears almost able to convey the sound of the proverbial dropping pin.

And I’ve always insisted on demanding to see those cardboard tubes which collect the water and wax post-flushing, so I could gaze at what my ears had produced. I find it oddly fascinating.

(When ‘researching’ this article, I came across the tale of one Neel Raithatha, aka ‘The Wax Whisperer’, who shared a photo of a mound of wax and dead skin which had built up over 16 years in just one ear of a patient of his at his practice in Leicester. To me, it was a thing of wonder, and I stared at it for ages.)

I admit I’m a bit of a slouch when it comes to applying drops (hydrogen peroxide-based or extra virgin olive oil if you’re interested). And I always leave it too late to get the old lugholes cleansed of the yellow stuff. But I am pretty sure hearing aids exacerbate wax production, and now that I am a fully signed up member of the cochlear implant-sporting fraternity, I believed it to be less of a pressing matter.

Over the last two years, though, I’ve really let things slide. I have vague memories of my surgery saying they ‘weren’t doing syringing’, and I assumed this was related to the lockdown. Fair enough, I reckoned. Global pandemic and all that – there are other things for my local surgery to worry about.

Then the other day I was in a branch of a well-known national chain of opticians with an aged relative who was having their first hearing aids fitted. Their ears were checked for wax, and we could see what the audiologist saw via a laptop screen. I reckoned I wanted a bit of that, so shamelessly blagged some of my poor aged relative’s precious, long-awaited appointment time for the audiologist to peer at my eardrum too.

Except that she couldn’t, at least the right-hand one. Even I, with the scientific ability of a houseplant, could see on the screen that it was fully covered by wax, although I could identify the dark hole of the drum in the image of my left ear. The rest of the image was taken up by a weird moonscape of the sticky stuff.

The audiologist warned me that it might be hard to get free syringing. And so it came to pass. My local surgery texted me a list of private providers offering this service. One …….

Source: https://limpingchicken.com/2022/03/15/juliet-england-why-we-need-to-talk-about-ear-wax-removal/