Finally @Madgie went off to Rome for the Epic Cycle, and I was home alone for 4 days. I was really looking forward to spending time on my own and doing lots of pottering about and other bits that I never seem to have time to do, but it didn’t t quite gone to plan.
At the weekend I woke up with a blocked ear. I put drops in, like they say you should, but nothing happened. By Tuesday I tried to syringe it at home, but nothing happened. So more drops, and more syringing, but still nothing. By this time I was raging with it. The whole side of my face was numb, I couldn’t hear anything and I felt dreadful. On Tuesday morning I phoned Medicentre to get a nurses appointment for a professional to look at it, because I was convinced it was more than a blocked ear and I didn’t want an infection to stop me flying to Italy.
After syringing my ear for ages, the nurse gave up. She said ‘put drops in it’ because there’s nothing moving in there. So I filled my ear with drops and went to bed. More drops, more home syringing, more nothing and Wednesday passed in a dizzy fog – it’s amazing how difficult it is to cross a busy London road when you can’t hear properly. By Thursday I was ready to chop my own ear off. I was up at 4am trying more syringing, but to no avail, so I phoned a private doctor. Who was useless. Literally, he couldn’t have been more useless. He looked at it and said ‘yep, you’ve got some wax in there, use drops’. By this time I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to fly on Saturday and as a last resort stood outside the crap doctors and searched ‘extreme ear wax removal’, in the hope I could concoct some sort of home remedy involving magic ear wax removing acid. But better than that, a result came up for something called micro-suction.
By 5pm I had an appointment and by 5.05pm I was cured. Turns out ear hoovering (micro suction) is a miracle. They insert a tiny little tube and basically vacuum the inside of your ear. It’s really tickly but doesn’t hurt at all and takes about 30 seconds. So almost a week, 2 doctors and £150 bloody quid later I could finally hear (and cross the road) and boy was everything loud! But most importantly, I could go to Rome and know I could have a nice time.
Oh, and for the record – ear drops don’t work.
