Wednesday, November 21, 2007

It's a Miracle!

So I have finally recovered from my deafness. Say what? My deafness - I can hear! If you don't remember - over a month ago I reported that after a cold my left ear had become clogged and I was having trouble hearing. So it kinda cleared up a few weeks later but then got worse. Two Saturdays ago I woke up and could not hear out of either ear. I shouldn't say that, I could hear but it sounded like there were cotton balls lodged in both ears which means a lot of my world sounded like the adults on the Peanuts cartoons. You know...Wah wah wah wah... wha wha wah wah? I was driving Angelo crazy because I couldn't hear anything he was saying and the TV was at about double the volume it usually is and I still wasn't able to hear it all that well. So I finally went to the doctor's last week and was told the grossest prognosis. I had extreme earwax build-up! Yuck! It had completely blocked both ear drums. (For the record I do clean out my ears and I consider myself an above-averagely clean person. This totally grossed me out.) So the nurse (yep it was Nurse Nancy) told me to use this stuff you can buy at the drug store. You drop it in your ears twice a day for four days and then on the fourth day you shoot water in your ears to dislodge this gunk. She had done it before to herself and warned me what it would look like as it came out. Thank goodness she did because if she hadn't I would have thought I was losing brain matter. So on Sunday Angelo and I set about to rid my ear of this disgusting yuck and Angelo was a little too excited to help. I think he was approaching this the same way as popping a giant zit - you know it's going to be totally gross but at the same time it's going to be awesome! So as I leaned over the bathroom sink Angelo shot some water into my ear. What came out was awful looking. Sort of brown and black chunks. I had no idea that is what lives deep in our ears. It looks something like this...

These are actually carmel cashew brownies but they have a striking resemblance to what we saw in the sink. So once my ears were unclogged I went from one extreme to the other. I then had superman's hearing abilities! The water coming out into the sink was now VERY loud. When I spoke it sounded like I was talking into a microphone. Later, Angelo was eating popcorn and I heard a kernel fall to the floor loudly without even seeing it fall. It was bizarre how loud things were. I think it was because I hadn't really heard noises in over a month and also that my ears were now cleaner than most. Even now my car keys jangling seems really loud and also the sound of papers rubbing together is driving me crazy! I am sorry to everyone I have tried to talk to over the last few weeks. I have only heard about half of every conversation that I have had but at least I have learned to appreciate my hearing. I don't think I want any brownies for awhile though.

4 comments:

Teneil said...

Hey Katie--I enjoyed reading about your latest "miracle." I couldn't stop laughing...the example of the carmel brownies sure brought it all home. I think my Dad needs to have a talk with Nurse Nancy.

JoeFlyer said...

Thanks for ruining the caramel cashew brownies for me !@&#^!*&@^

janet said...

Ear wax build up runs in our family...I think...I had my ears cleaned out while I was dating Joe (right in front of him) at Kaiser...We had been dating for about a month! It was so embarrassing...But they used a drill and it was whitish globs...true love!

Steve said...

I had this happen on my mission... I put some of the same stuff in my ears but I wasn't told about spraying the stuff out with water... I guess they spared me from the gross part.