To all of the people out there who like to clean out their ears with Q-tips, I would advise you to stop immediately. Cleaning your ear with these things scrapes away the skin cells that have the good bacteria that fight organisms that cause crazy bad infections. I learned this from experiencing one of those crazy bad infections myself. I woke up Sunday morning in pretty severe pain but just took some Advil. Monday morning I was wide awake at 4:30am in TERRIBLE pain. I decided to go to the minute clinic where they informed me that my ear was too bad for them to treat. Next stop, Duke urgent care where they informed me that i had a very bad inner ear infection and put me on antibiotics. Two days later....HORRIBLE HORRIBLE PAIN. Now in Charlotte..I go to the ENT (thanks to Melanie Huffman) The doctor takes one look in my ear and grumbles...he said "follow me" i followed him into one of those scary looking rooms with a table to lay on and stuff and he proceeds to suction out my ear for several minutes and look at it under a microscope. He then puts this thing called a wick in my ear that has to stay for two days and one of my awesome friends gets to pull in out. Once I sat up he sat in front of me and informed me that this "heck of a painful" ear infection was self induced. He then told me that some people don't where seat belts until they are in a crash and this is what has happened to me. I knew instantly what I did. NEVER CLEAN YOUR EARS WITH Q-Tips!!!!!!!!!
OMG! Who knew? I was using a Q-tip one time and had already rammed it all the way in my ear when I realized there was no fluffy cotton on the end. That's right - I basically probed my ear with a stick. Felt really good ;) Hope you're feeling better soon!
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