can you hear me now
check out the old equipment in the background. not much has changed
i went to the hearing doctor’s on friday to get my hearing checked. the last few months i was concerned that my hearing was starting to fade. i thought i couldn’t hear people as well in conversations and i listen to an ipod about 2-3 hours a day. time to get checked.
first off, i met an audiologist and he took me into a soundproof room about the size of an elevator. it’s a good thing i’m not claustrophobic. i got some hearing earplugs installed and a little trigger control. with the earplugs installed and no sounds in the room all you can hear is youself breathing.
first, i had to squeeze the trigger when i heard a sound. the sounds got fainter and fainter and fainter….and fainter. i had to time my breathing to be between the faint sounds. next it was on to a sentence i had to hear and repeat. quieter and quieter. lastly some words i had to listen to and repeat. again, timing my breathing so i didn’t make noise during the words.
i felt pretty good about the test thinking i heard everything. but then i realized…i’d never even know if there was noise i didn’t hear. because i wouldn’t hear it. like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody heard it, i wouldn’t know a tree fell.
the results came in and i passed with flying colours. top tier hearing results. sadly, i didn’t get a blue ribbon or a certificate for my wall, “Blaine Kendall has achieved excellence in the field of hearing”.
spoiler alert: gross part ahead.
the doctor took a look in the ears. a bit of a wax ball that he pulled out. since i was a kid, i’ve always had wax buildups in my ears. and once when it was really bad, the nurse flushed my ears with a water solution and it was amazing. i’m a big fan of ear flushing. after it’s over, you feel like you can hear a pin drop.
the process works like this. if you have a bad buildup, you may need to get some baby oil in your ears for a day to soften it up. then the nurse takes a water syringe of warm water and squirts it slowly into your ear. the water sprays your eardrum, bouncing back and flushing out the wax, sometimes with very gross results. but your hearing will be amazing afterwards. don’t try this at home with a normal syringe…it can be dangerous and cause ear damage if you don’t know what you’re doing. best to let a medical professional do it for you. i’ve tried the murine ear kit as well for doing it at home.
there’s also ear candling as well. you place a cone candle in your ear, and the heat melts the wax in your ear and pulls it out. i haven’t tried this, but it apparently has some good results.
have you had your ears checked lately?