Will my ear recover?

Question

I was STUPIDLY playing my iPod (in-ear earbuds) music at the highest volume setting and walked into a quiet elevator with it blasting in my right ear only and now I have a slight pain when I was cleaning it out for wax and when I compare the SAME earbud from left to right ear, the left ear hears louder than the right. I hope things will heal over time because this happened only yesterday and I realize that it was a HUGE mistake on my end, but does anybody know if it will heal? I'm definitely not listening to music with earbuds or headphones anymore for a long long time. Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

You probably simply have a case of auditory exhaustion.  Inside the ear you have tiny hairs that are tuned to a particular frequency.  Think grass, on a very tiny level.  If you lay down on grass long enough, you sort of pack it down, and when you get back up- it stays crumpled for a bit.  Eventually most of it will actually stand back up.  So will the tiny hairs in your ear.  Most of them, anyway.  A few may have died off- but most will recover.  Give it a few days of "ear rest", and things should imnprove.  It may also be that in your efforts to clean your ears, you packed the wax against the ear drum itself.  That would prevent the eardrum from moving as it should, and the result would be dull hearing.  I think your best bet right at the moment would be to visit the doctor and have them examine the ear.  If needed, the doctor can clean out excess wax, which will improve your hearing.  In the future, it's best not to try to clean wax from the ears- certainly not using the old q-tip method.  It's also best not to have the volume up higher than you can hear other people speak to you over.  Any noise over 74dB can be hazardous to your hearing, and noise- even pleasant music, played directly in the ears will do it fairly quickly.  So yes, keep the volume down.  Hearing loss due to noise damage isn't fixable, and hearing aids won't help.    

Answer 2

Never stick things in your ears, you can get an ear infection and damage your ear.

It will heal but if you put things in your ear it will get worse, trust me. The doctor can take a look at your ear for damage/wax build up.

You can scratch the eardrum by putting things in it.