A former Royal Navy engineer has had his hearing restored after discovering part of an old earbud had been stuck in his ear for five years.
Wallace Lee, 66, thought that suddenly going partially deaf was due to a career of working with helicopter engines. The keen golfer also suffered a loss of balance which affected his game.
Even when he developed an infection in his left ear, his GP couldn’t find anything wrong due to the build-up of wax and prescribed him antibiotics. Wallace, from Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, tried ear drops and warm water fired from a syringe for relief but nothing worked.
It wasn’t until he bought his own mobile endoscope which sent live video from inside his ear canal to his mobile phone via Bluetooth he realised there was a foreign object there.
A hospital ear, nose and throat doctor removed the 1cm long plastic insert to an earbud using tweezers.
The plastic part had been there since Wallace put ear defenders in during a flight to Australia in 2017.
He believes that when he pulled the soft rubber bud out of his ear at the end of the flight, it became detached from the plastic insert without him noticing. As soon as it was removed from his ear canal he instantly regained his full hearing and balance.
Wallace, who now lives with wife Jeanette in Weymouth, Dorset, said: “It has felt as though my head was full of cotton wool and as soon as this piece of plastic came out with a pop, I could hear perfectly again. It feels like I have a new lease of life.
“It definitely affected the balance, which probably did make me worse and impact my golf. I used to be a fairly reasonable golfer but over the past few years my handicap has crept up and up.
“But since I returned to normal, I have played really well.
“My wife is also very relieved as she was convinced I was going deaf.”
Wallace spent 24 years working with helicopters in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm and believed being in close proximity to noisy engines had caused him to lose his hearing.
He said: “I was beginning to believe that I was going deaf.
“My wife had been telling me for ages I was. I kept pushing it to the back of my mind and saying, ‘Oh, you’re mumbling. Stop mumbling’.”
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