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I accidentally stabbed my self in the ear no blood but off and on pain and muffled hearing

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I think I might have ear rupture And parents think it’s a joke

I think I ruptured my eardrum from q tips but my parents think it’s a joke

Hi, so let me explain what happened and how it happened. I have used ear tips in my ears for almost 18 years. ( I’m 18 years old). And had no issues with rupturing or pain in the ear drum. Now yesterday I was going to brush my teeth. And when before brushing my teeth I was listening to music, I took my AirPods out, and saw ear wax on it, so I thought I might need to clean my ears. So then I went into the bathroom and I was about to brush my teeth, then I grabbed two q tips, I did the left ear nothing happened. But when I did the right ear I put it in and suddenly I screamed so loud I said “aaaah” I heard the ear drum kind of heart beating and lost my hearing on that ear for about 3-4 seconds. My mom and dad was like are you ok are you ok? I was like no, I’m not okay. Then I was saying to my dad I think I ruptured my ear drum, he started to laugh and said, son if you ruptured your eardrum you would scream so loud and touch the ceiling. Then, he started to laugh, he called me a overthinker and he said by morning you will be fine. So I took his word and I couldn’t sleep for almost 2 hours, then at 5 AM today, I woke up and started crying and sweating that I might have lost partially of my hearing, then I ran into my moms room, she was sleeping and said what happened? I explained what happened last night, and she said you will be fine just wait it’s nothing serious let me go to sleep I have to go to work. And now morning, I woke up and the pain was still happening, I forgot to mention at 5 AM the pain stopped but when you put your finger in your ear drum it hurts, now the pain comes and goes. When I yawn it pains the most! Now I did some research online, and they said that go to the doctor or a ear doctor, because this can lead to hearing loss and issues. Now with my ear I can hear my left one more clearly than my right, if feels like I’m deaf in one ear, but when I cover my left year I can hear the right, but technically partially of my hearing in that case. If I don’t go to the doctor because of my parents situation will it heal by itself my parents so called “had this issue” and said it healed within days?, do you think the partially hearing is permanent and I can get back to my 100% hearing on my right ear back?, what else should I do? Should I avoid listening to music from my AirPods to take a pre-caution? One more thing I can say, why would I cry so much on a situation that I can loose my hearing. You can never get it back, it’s like being blind or deaf. When some finger comes out, it doesn’t grow back. Thank you for reading my post. Also I forgot to mention that my eardrum on the left is more less deep than the one on the right, does this mean that my ear drum got pushed because of the q tip incident?

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Why not just go see the family doctor? Your doctor or even a physician’s assistant (maybe a nurse?) might readily determine the state of affairs and eliminate guesswork. A user name other than “troll3743” might be useful.

Paragraphs makes things easier to read. Sorry, but I stopped reading about half way through.

No disrespect intended, but I don’t know why you don’t seek medical attention, they are the only ones who can determine of there is any damage or not.

If I understand correctly, the issue is that your parents don’t think you need to see the doctor.
Unless you have a way around that, your option is to wait. Quit poking at it to see if it still hurts. It will most likely heal on it’s own. There is a risk of infection but that should make it’s presence known by increased pain and/or drainage. Hopefully you’ve learned something from this incident.

You’re 18 years old. You’re an adult. You don’t need your parents permission to see a doctor. If you put a Q-tip through your eardrum, then this is a serious medical situation. You should be consulting with a physician, not a bunch of knuckleheads on an internet forum. If you haven’t gone to the urgent care center yet, go now.

Knuckleheads?! Writing in anonymity yes. But there are several experts around here. There are health professionals here too.
I’m liking jim_lewis’s last sentence though.

But none of our resident experts is going to be able to reach out through the internet and stick an otoscope in this person’s ear. I have no objection to seeking generic health information from the internet, but an injury requires an actual in person visit.
You have to participate in a forum for quite a while to figure out who the real experts are. I remember a user called “doubledown” who fancied himself quite the expert around here, much to the ire of the actual experts.

Oh I agree but I would have said “You should be consulting with a physician, not anonymous posters on an internet forum”.
But you be you. :slight_smile:

You don’t need a referral to see an audiologist. They are going to be the best person to look in your ear and see if you’ve done damage. Just google local audiologists and call their office, let them know you’ve experienced an possible ear trauma with sudden hearing loss–they’ll get you in pretty quickly and if there is a problem they can facilitate referral to an .

Stop using qtips.

And breaking eardrum won’t make you scream and jump to the ceiling. It depends on your pain tolerance. I was sitting next to the person whose eardrum ruptured because of the pressure because she wasn’t stabilising the pressure fast enough. She said aua, and put hand over ear, and said ‘something popped’. Procedure was stopped and she was escorted out of the hyperbaric chamber we were in.
Mind you, instructions were to just swallow regularly, we could take sips of water, that was enough, and pressure increase is slow. But she must thinking about something else and forgot to swallow often.

Eg your parents are totally clueless, so don’t trust them for medical advice, go see your doctors.

It is possible that you have an inflammation which hurts on the touch.

Both ear drum rupture (btw, you can’t reach it with your finger) and inflammation can cause temporary hearing loss.

Also, with both when healed, hearing is restored to normal levels.
But, they do need medical exam and maybe medicines.

Untreated indeed can lead to permanent hearing loss of some complications happen.

Go to your family doc, , audiologist, doesn’t matter, they’ll have a look and know if more than some pills is needed.

That being said, there are conditions where days matter and can make difference between hearing restoration or permanent loss, so, go asap to some of those doctors, since you have no clue what’s going on, better safe than sorry.

Edited

I won’t claim expertise, but I do have some medical background. What conditions are at all likely that would require any treatment?

I’ll expand a bit. My take was OP’s parents don’t think this event warrants a visit to MD, perhaps because of financial reasons. I think the odds of it being anything that needs treatment are pretty low and if it does, it should soon make itself apparent. If I’m wrong, I’d like to know what are the specific possibilities.

Given ongoing pain and partial hearing loss, my best guess would be that he just shoved some wax up against the eardrum and now it’s sitting far back in an uncomfortable position and is unlikely to move out on its own.

A small perforation may cause noticeable hearing loss and would heal on its own, but I wouldn’t really expect it to hurt much after the initial event. I can imagine a continuum of more traumatic and much more unlikely events that wouldn’t necessarily cause dramatic pain in the moment but would definitely need medical follow-up.

I’d still recommend an audiologist above anyone else. An needs a referral and is going to be the most expensive. Honestly, a family physician only knows what they are looking at when they look in an ear about 50% of the time and their go-to prescription for hearing loss seems to be decongestants. There’s a reasonable chance that if he calls an audiologist and explains that he’s a kid, did something mysterious to his ear, and his parents won’t take him to see a doctor, that they will get him in quickly at minimal or no charge.

Thanks. I wonder if that’s the case in the US with audiolgists. Most practices here seem like hearing aid stores. I would think most such cases would be seen by urgent care or ERs here, with some by primary care physicians if there’s an actual personal relationship. I hadn’t thought of ear wax being pushed against the ear drum. I found his history fuzzy. To me it sounded like it only hurt if he poked around with the q-tip again. I was primarily going off of knowing that most ear drum perfs heal on their own and in general, most health issues improve on their own. Something like sudden loss with no explanation is another story, I sometimes participate on another site (Quora) and it is rife with anxiety ridden people and people urging people to go to ER for really stupid things.

Yeah, I wouldn’t expect an ER visit to do anything for this kid.

I am also very cynical about medical professionals who aren’t audiologists (or ) or , or maybe nurses who have a good background in ear wax removal, having any idea what they are looking at when they look in an ear.

As an aside, I’ve had audiologist’s offices here request that the patient see their doctor first (before an appointment) to make sure their ears are clear of wax.

Mm, that is a difference. I know that some chain/manufacturer hearing aid clinics won’t do wax removal because it is comparatively less lucrative. But here ear wax removal has just been delisted from our provincial healthcare, so unless you have a friendly nurse/doctor willing to do it for free, or a regular thing with an , it’s all audiologists now.

I found the pain to subside when my ear drums rupture many times as a child but we are all difference so this doesn’t mean anything.

My right ear drum was always left to heal on its own. I’ve had two surgeries as a young child to repair my ear drum on my left but I don’t know why I needed surgery as I was only around 10 years old and now I’m 30 so a long time ago.

I do know the said that most ear drums heal on there own.

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