Victory Is Mine!!!

Now I know what you are thinking from the title. You're thinking I have become victorious in my battle against the mailman. No. Not even close. It's my ear. Yes, my ear. My ear and I have been in a fierce battle for the past 3 days. Here's how it all went down.


It started with this....

And then this...

The University of Minnesota had an open swim/dive on Sunday. We decided to go and I was brave enough to jump off the high dive as you can see above. You'll notice my excellent form on the entry in the second photo. That's what did it. My clean entry caused me to plunge very deep into the water. That's when it happened. The water blasted its way into my ear...and refused to come out. Here is an illustrated rendition of what I went through for the next three days.


It begins...

I notice the water in my ear as I am exiting the pool. I do the customary head banging to dislodge the water. No luck.

This is when the full fledged torture began. I got in the car and turned on the music. I could only hear it out of my left ear. Try driving with your ear plugged sometime. The car sounds are all different, you can't hear the cars on one side of you. It's very annoying. I shook my head every chance I got...no luck.





I get home and sit on the couch to write my blog. The head banging continues. Again, no luck. I am deaf in my right ear and the constant headbanging has now made my neck very sore. Schnoozle offers her advice...

I finish my blog and go to bed. I get in bed, turn on the hot steam humidifier and awkwardly hold my head over it. I hope that the steam will penetrate my ear and help coax the water out. I ignore the neck pain and shake my head while the steam enters my ear. Guess what!!! No luck. Schnoozle offers more advice...




I wake up the next morning and my ear is still clogged and definitely worse. Why didn't Schnoozle warn me? Awesome. I shower, drive to work, sit at my desk and realize I can't stand it. I go to target and get ear cleaner/wax remover. I make several awkward trips to the bathroom to squirt the stuff in my ear.



Now, the side of my head is wet, my ear is still clogged and I'm super pissed. I return to my meeting.



My ear partially clears for about 10 minutes then clogs back up. I'm very super pissed. I research "how to remove water from your ear" on the internet. The first site recommends putting rubbing alcohol in my ear. For some reason I decide to do this over the kitchen sink.



Not only does it not work, but the rubbing alcohol really stings my now sore and tender ear. Time for internet method 2...use a hairdryer to to dry the water out of the ear. More advice from Schnoozle...




I'll give you three guess what else didn't work...but you'll only need one. I'm totally desperate. I go into the living room and decide to bust out my gymnastics skills and hope that gravity will be on my side.




Still no luck. I admit defeat and go to bed. I will call the doctor in the morning.

It's morning and my ear is worse. I schedule an appointment for 2:00pm. Naturally I have two meetings I have to suffer through and spend most of the time shaking my head, cringing at the neck pain.


(yeah, I reused the picture, so what)


It's time for my doctor's appointment. The doctor comes in and looks in my ear. He says it's blocked by some ear wax and that's what's causing all the pain, pressure and loss of hearing. He says the nurse will be right in to clean it out. The nurse comes in with at giant syringe and some warm water and peroxide. She inserts the giant syringe in my ear, puts a bowl under my ear and blasts the water into it Super Soaker style. The water blasts out all the stuff in my ear and drains into the bowl. Gross. (See zoomed in image for detail of the giant syringe in my ear. Drawing is to scale)




I can hear!! The pain and pressure is gone. Oh my god I am so happy.




And that is the story of my victory over the water in my ear.



P.S. My mailman still sucks.