He was a new patient. His medical records described him as severely hearing impaired and suffering from a rare movement disorder. He arrived with a caseworker for his 11:30 first appointment and I was running late.
“Why is a new patient or a minor surgery procedure ever scheduled at the end of the morning instead of at the beginning”, I asked Autumn, rhetorically.
The man seemed to be bouncing around in the small exam room. His head bobbed randomly and his body moved like waves in a wading pool full of three-year olds.
I introduced myself. His caseworker, clipboard in her left hand, shook my right hand. The man floated toward me, cocked his head suddenly and hollered while pointing to his right ear:
“I can’t hear!”
“For how long?” I asked.
He didn’t seem to hear me.
“At least a few years from what I know”, his caseworker answered, drowned out by the man’s repetition, “I can’t hear, I can’t hear!”
He seemed irritable, frustrated, and there was an air of desperation in the room. The caseworker looked helpless.
It was 12:35.
“Let me check your ears”, I said, gesturing with the wall mounted otoscope.
“I can’t hear!” the man shouted.
As I leaned toward him I could smell the odor of ear wax. I tried to gently grab and pull his right ear upward and back while I held the otoscope head between my right thumb and index finger and leaned the pinky-side of my hand against his cheek.
His head moved back and forth, up and down. Pushing my right hand firmly into his cheek, I moved with him, as if we were both bouncing on an underinflated air mattress.
All I saw was ear wax.
I repeated the procedure with his left ear. It, too was impacted with black, smelly cerumen.
“Let me flush your ears”, I said, loudly, into his right ear.
“I can’t hear!” he hollered back.
“I’ll be back”, I said and gestured with my index finger straight up as in “one minute”.
So followed an awkward dance with the man sitting in the exam room chair by the sink, Chux pad on his shoulder, the caseworker holding the cup under his ear and me flushing his right ear with lukewarm water from a large plastic syringe. All three of us moved in near-unison, again and again in what looked like multiple attempts to master a Tango step, sometimes rising at the end, sometimes sinking down or pausing mid-movement, all three of us.
The ear wax poured into the cup and large amounts of water saturated the Chux pad and the side of the man’s neck. Some of it landed on me.
As I eased myself away each time from our virtual embrace to empty the cup of clumpy wax soup into the sink, I watched through my splattered glasses for a reaction.
After the fifth or sixth serving, the man’s movements stopped suddenly. He shook his head like a wet dog. Slowly, he cocked his head and I could sense how he was trying to listen.
The aura in the room changed. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful. He was perfectly still for what seemed like half a minute. The caseworker picked up her clipboard and clicked her ballpoint pen. The ceiling air vents blew their gentle, artificial breeze. Someone walked down the hall outside the exam room.
“I can hear again. Thank you”, he said in a normal voice.
“Fantastic. Are you ready for the other ear?” I gestured with the otoscope. It was 12:49.
His head started to gently move again.
“Let’s roll!” he grinned.
A Country Doctor Writes: 
Oh, I can hear the love in your voice, Doc. Thank you! TS
this entered my heart and made music.
Wonderful, Doctor! I thank you, too. e.conboy
Great work, but really disgusting! You guys are really a different breed, and thank goodness for it.
This happens more than people think. My eigth grade teacher dropped out of school because he couldn’t hear out of one ear. Yes, y’all guesed it he was drafted, and they cleaned out his ear, and sent him to boot camp.
One reason I enjoyed military care, was because they kept my ears cleaned out. I had one civilian doctor that did the same. I sort of break the guidelines in cleaning out my ears, but I can hear. .