I'm less than 50% deaf!

so i get ear blockages a lot. a lot a lot. maybe that’s like an ear infection or something.

usually it’s one ear blocked. this will go on for months at a time trading between ears. yes i use olive oil. yes i go to my gp. they complain at me because i don’t juice up both ears. i like wearing airpods okay. i have autism.

this sort of compounds with:

  • me being sort of bad in social situations generally
  • me having really bad speech processing due to the autism
  • suddenly having my ears blocked or unblocked can cause me to dissociate really badly or get dizzy
    • when an unblock happens, usually our ability to figure out the direction of a sound is ‘miscalibrated’ for a long while. it takes an hour maybe.
  • sometimes i go nonverbal!!

this makes social situations really fucking hard sometimes. i hate it.

what do i do about ittt

when i remember:

  1. oil the blocked ear. one or two drops.
  2. sample for any wax released. it’s good if i get wax from this.
    1. i will either use tissue paper (if there’s a lot of oil) or a cotton wool bud (!!! i only ever go 1cm depth maximum. do not stick things inside of your ear.)
  3. if i get no wax release, i drop more oil in until i get a response. i stop at about six to eight times.
  4. consiously try to not put in-ear headphones into that ear for about two days after oil has been put in the ear. usually i will try and clean the outer ear with more buds/paper (again, not with depth.)

metastability

the quality of a physical system that persists in its existing equilibrium when undisturbed (or only slightly disturbed) but able to pass to a more stable equilibrium when sufficiently disturbed

sometimes it feels like having no blocked ears is metastable. it’s not the default state. if i shower and get water in my ears, or something, the ear wax is coming for me. it’s horrifying. it’s scary. i don’t like being deaf it’s not fun.

so sometimes you are deaf and sometimes you are mute

ya. inconvenient right

Symptoms of excessive wax or impaction, especially in the elderly, include not only hearing loss but tinnitus, dizziness, infections, social withdrawal, poor work function and mild paranoia. Other problems include general disorientation and loss of an aural sense of direction. With unilateral wax, sounds can appear to be coming from the wrong side, leading to accidents as a driver or especially as a pedestrian. Inappropriate self-treatment (or even treatment by health professionals) can cause perforated eardrums and in very rare cases cochlear damage, leading to nystagmus and sensorineural deafness. In spite of this catalogue of harms, the clinical profile and management of excessive wax are poorly understood. The evidence base is poor and inconsistent, leading to few strong recommendations, even relating to the most commonly used treatments.

The traditional way of removing excess wax is by requiring the patient to apply drops of various kinds for a few days, followed by manual syringing using water at body temperature and a large metal syringe. Older general practitioners (GPs) will remember that it was common to do this for two or three patients a week. In this century, that function has been taken over by nurses and audiologists, while manual syringing has been replaced by electronic irrigation machines and microsuction. Setting aside issues of clinical effectiveness, the doctor-patient relationship in communities may have been significantly altered because this intimate and painstaking procedure, which most patients would have undergone at some time, has now changed from a personal interaction with their family doctor that often led to instant relief, to a delegated and technological one.

John Launer, Waxing lyrical: taking ear wax seriously, Postgraduate Medical Journal, Volume 97, Issue 1149, July 2021, Pages 475–476, https://doi.org/10.1136/postgradmedj-2021-140415

update: getting my ears syringed at my GP in a few days :)

Last updated: Jun 12, 2026 ()