This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

warning: gross

I went to the doctor today to get a check up on what I thought was a recurring inner-ear infection.

He couldn't look at my eardrum, though, because apparently there was too much earwax. He pulled out about one pea's-worth of normal wax from my healthy ear. All of a sudden I could hear twice as well, and I figured that that was what was wrong with the other one, too. Simple problem, simple solution, right?

My infected ear was another story. He pulled about two peas of black, congealed earwax with a plastic rod. Already twice as much as was in my other ear, it wasn't enough. He got a thinner metal rod out, and retrieved more bloodied wax, this time covered in runny brown pus. That still wasn't enough to even see my eardrum to see if my inner ear was infected, but at that point it was too inflamed to get anymore out. It also hurt like hell.

He gave me some drops to reduce inflammation and get rid of the remaining wax, and I'll see him in a week to see if my inner ear is actually infected or not. I'm pretty sure it is. I'm now acutely aware of each square millimeter of the surface of my ear canal, and the sharp, stabbing pain of my outer ear feels very different to the dull, throbbing pain that I came in with.

Long story short, my ear hurts worse even than before, the extra inflammation makes it impossible to hear anything on my left side, and I learned that I likely managed to get some form of outer-ear infection as well as an inner-ear one.