Q-tips

My husband, Mike, has a habit of cleaning his ears with Q-tips when he comes out of the shower. I never had any problem with this and actually enjoy seeing my reflection in his squeaky-clean ear canal. He tends to travel sporadically for his work and I usually even go the extra step to pack Q-tips for his trip to make his ear-cleaning ritual easy for him.

At this point, I think I need to discuss the difference between Q-tips and other less-worthy-of-Mike's-earwax type of cotton swabs. With the trusty Q-tip, you never have to worry that the cotton tip will come off in your ear. It is stuck on the swab with epoxy or something. Other generic swabs lose there cotton before they are even out of the box. Pathetic really. That is why I always go the extra mile to pack my beloved real, honest-to-God Q-tips so that he will never have to use these inferior, unworthy types.

Well, on this particular trip, Mike noticed that his hotel provided cotton swabs as a bathroom amenity (which the knucklehead knows all good hotels do and he has never been drawn to them before) and decided to save his precious packed Q-tips and clean his ears with these instead. As he described it to me, the swab went in his ear with cotton on it and came out missing, most, if not all of it. Most people would let the fact that they had cotton stuck inside their ear bother them. Not Mike. He came home from his trip and only mentioned this incident days later, when he noticed a cracking noise in his ear when he took the elevator to his office on the top floor of his building. I told him that he needed to seek medical assistance to yank that cotton-puppy out, but he just laughed at the suggestion. This went on for about 10 days. Each day the cracking noise was occurring more frequently and was now accompanied by pain.

It got to the point that I told Mike he needed to either seek medical assistance or keep all this nonsense to himself so I didn't have to hear it. On that note, he decided to take action. As a financial planner, Mike sees many clients who are veterinarians. Visiting one of them at their animal hospital, he asked the vet to look in his ear and see if there was anything inside. The vet told him that he is used to the anatomy of a dog or cat's ear, but really knows very little about what a human ear should look like. Mike told him not to worry about it and just look in his normal, healthy, cotton-swabless ear for guidance. After doing this, the vet checked his sickly, stuffed ear and said that he did indeed think there was something stuck inside. He explained to my husband that he could try to remove it if he wanted, but to remember that his tools and expertise are geared toward animals. Re-thinking his options, Mike decided this was a bad idea and thanked the vet for all his help.

Several more days passed, and he finally could no longer tolerate the pain. He asked me to make an appointment for him with our family doctor, who informed me I needed to contact an ear, nose and throat specialist. Two weeks after the original cotton swab incident took place my husband had an emergency appointment with the ENT. Into Mike's ear went some instrument and out came a piece of cotton the size of a grown-man's thumbnail. Oh, did I mention the pain involved? Well, it hurt like hell because the cotton started to become part of his ear and nearly caused an infection.

Needless to say, Q-tips rock (and so do vets and ENTS)!