Wallace Lee says he feared he was going deaf before the small white object was finally removed.
A man who thought he was going deaf has discovered that part of an earbud had been lodged in his ear for five years.
Wallace Lee, from Weymouth in Dorset, had put his hearing problems down to a career working in the noisy aviation industry or old rugby injuries.
He decided to visit a doctor after buying a home endoscope kit that helped him spot a small white object.
Mr Lee said he was delighted and that it was an “instant relief” when the unusual blockage was finally removed.
Image source, Wallace Lee
The Royal Navy veteran believes the object got stuck during a plane journey.
“Five years ago when I was visiting my family in Australia I bought these little earplugs that you can put different attachments in, depending on the noise you want to phase out on an aircraft,” he said.
“One of these little attachments had lodged in there and it had been in there ever since.”
He had noticed a deterioration in his hearing, as had his wife, and was starting to fear he was going deaf.
Mr Lee said he had tried to clear his ears a number of times over the years without success, describing himself as being at his “wit’s end”.
He said the ear, note and throat (ENT) surgeon who successfully removed the blockage was “amazed”.
“[The doctor] initially tried to suck it out… but because it had been in there that long with the build up of the hard ear wax, it wouldn’t move at all,” Mr Lee said.
“So he got these miniature tweezers which they put down this other tube into the ear canal… I could actually feel him tugging, and all of a sudden it went pop.
“Instantly I could hear everything in the room. The fog that was in my head for all those years went and left – and I could hear perfectly well.
“It was just such a relief… it’s like hearing correctly for the first time all over again.”
ENT surgeon Mr Neil De Zoysa told the BBC examining your own ears at home was unlikely to be too harmful.
However, he urged people not to try to remove foreign objects without professional medical help as it could lead to infection or more difficulties later.
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