"DON'T stick things in your ear"

....said my audiologist to me as he took the ear-looky thing out of my ear hole.

"That's a lot of blood. You should have gone to your family doctor instead of me"

Internally I smiled, knowing full-well that calling my fam doc would've meant a wait, or a referral to the ER, which would entail a 6+ hour wait that I was in no mood to endure.

"I could've," i said, "but you were the first person to come to mind. It's not that my ear was spurting blood profusely everywhere or anything".

"True," he agreed. He stuck a q-tip coated in vaseline in my ear a few times and swabbed away the massive pool of blood.

"Look," he said, showing me the end of a seriously drenched q-tip. "A small clot. It's started to stop." He looked happy. He stuck the ear-looky thing back in my ear. "Aaaaaaand there it is: you punctured a blood vessel."

He looked down at me as I sat in the chair trying not to laugh.

"DON'T.STICK.THINGS.IN.YOUR EAR"

Ok I take the message to heart. It all started a few days ago after I showered, where I was sure I got water in my ear. It's nothing too annoying but if I force my teeth shut there is a 'thunk'ing sound in my head. I told him this but he saw nothing with the magic ear-looky thing. My dad thinks it's probably a snot build up. Today I was stretching when I felt the thing budge. Wicked, finally! I thought happily, as I dug through my purse in search for my thing of Q-tips. Finding them, I whipped one out and put it in my ear, swabbing.

I removed the q-tip and there was blood. I stuck the other end in. Blood. Waited a bit, got a new q-tip, same thing. So i called the only person I could think of and zoomed right over. By that point it literally was bleeding profusely - dripping out my ear and down my neck kind've profuse. But being a hero, my audiologist staunched it and I came home with a lesson I will never forget.

Did you know that the humans first instinct when they see a hole is to stick something in it?

Now you do.