Back to Leads
Reddit

Severe ear and jaw pain

Post Content

I (17F) decided to clean my ears on Tuesday using water, as I've seen medical professionals recommend. I also used Q-Tips as the water wasn't working, nor was it leaving one of my ears. It just kept getting absorbed or something, nothing was coming out, so I used Q-Tips and it immediately began to hurt, so I didn't really push it after that. When I eventually dried most of the water, I couldn't hear too well, and was extremely dizzy, to the point of falling over and feeling nauseous. I decided to lie down, which didn't help. I thought I'd sleep it off, but the deafness continued into Wednesday, and actually seemed to have gotten worse. I tried a few things to "unclog" my ears, like moving my jaw, chewing, pulling my lobes and all that silly stuff, but nothing worked. I got some sort of relief pulling my ears open, like I could hear the nothingness clearer if that makes sense?? It no longer sounded like I was listening underwater, but I still couldn't hear. That night, the pain got really bad, and it kept pulsing and stinging to the point where I couldn't focus on anything else. I suffer from chronic pain and migraines, so I'm usually good at ignoring/managing these things, but even for me it was really painful. Today (Thursday) I still can't hear, and I definitely know there's no fluid in my ears anymore. The pain has gotten worse, and it seems to be inflamed. It sounds and feels slightly like when you have earphones in for too long. Yawning, chewing, or even just talking seems to make the pain worse, as of right now I quite literally can't hear at all, and the pain has started to migrate into my cheekbone, teeth, jaw, and even one side of my neck. I'm considering making a doctor's appointment, but have a bad history with the doctor in my area, so I'd like to make sure this is an actual problem that can't be solved at home. I've genuinely tried everything and I'm beginning to get paranoid that this is permanent lol. My leading theory is either that I've scratched my actual eardrum (somehow), that I've scratched another part of my ear and it's got infected, or that I've pushed the wax way too far back. Either way, I'd really like to avoid hearing aids and fix this as soon as possible before the issue gets any bigger. I start back to school soon and being unable to hear isn't ideal.

Details

Subreddit
r/AskDocs
Posted
Feb 13, 2026 at 1:00 AM UTC
Scanned

AI Analysis

No analysis data available