the other day i woke up and i couldn't hear out of my left ear.  and it wasn't one of those "i feel like there might be something in my ear" problems.  it was one of those "im in a hearing aid commercial" hello Hello HELLO!!! kind of total blockages.  Thankfully i was unafraid.

I was unafraid because i remembered a story my father told me years ago about the time that he woke up and though he had gone deaf.  The best part of this story is not that he mistook an ear blockage as a permanent loss of hearing.  its not even that my dad is a doctor.  The best part of the story, for me, was that when he woke up, he couldn't hear anything partially because his "good" ear was still on his pillow.

At least thats how i remember it.  and now that i've written it down  on the internet, it essentially becomes truth.  niffy really.

I digress.  The moral of the story was supposed to be that i learned from my father, as fathers have passed knowledge down to their sons for hundreds of years, that if you ever wake up and think you might have gone deaf, you probably have a ton of wax in your ear. 

I hydrogen peroxided the problem.  cotton swab. cotton swab.  cotton swab.  pen cap?

eventually the pain in the ass of being partially deaf got the better of me and i went into the health center to get it taken care of.

"taken care of" i learned means a spray bottle of warm water with an attachment that shoots the stream to the back of your ear, flushing its contents into the awaiting receptacle.

it was gross.  what can i say.  oh, what i can say is that after i got my ear douched and somewhat violated, i could hear again.  magical.  if only my back pain had had such an easy fix.

After my cleaning the doctor came in and gave it a quick look.  He said it did look red an irritated.  He was obviously contemplating whether or not i might have an infection.

And i sat there in the pregnant silence.  I am a man un-prone to keeping my mouth shut, so it was quite a feat that i kept mum.

kept mum on what you say?

Well . . . the irritation could have been caused by my temporary meltdown when i shoved that toothpick up my ear to try and scrape the wax out.

He said i should monitor. the situation.

Will do.