So I was nervous about having to go to a doctor yesterday, but I got good news there and basically was presented with a clean bill of health, so that's a relief.  

The most interesting part about it was I asked them to check my ears because I was told at my recent physical that I had a lot of earwax buildup and I needed to have them irrigated.  Sure enough, the doctor agreed and they were able to do the irrigation on the spot.  That in itself was a bit of a strange sensation as they basically hosed out my ears with a mixture of warm water and peroxide.  After that the medical assistant who was doing it pulled out the biggest chunk of earwax I've ever seen in my life.  It was gross, but also kind of fascinating.  I only got to see it briefly as he quickly threw it into the sink, probably because it grossed him out, but I kind of wish I'd gotten to take a better look at it.  From what I could see of it, I really was quite plugged up.  They said I should be able to hear better after getting that out.  I asked about preventing that in the future and I guess there's not really a way to do it.  The doctor was very adamant that q-tips aren't a good idea because they just push the wax in and impact it more.  He said to basically just have them checked once in a while and they may have to be irrigated occasionally.  I haven't had my ears looked at in, like, forever so I have a suspicion that was years worth of buildup.  Hopefully it'll be a long time before it gets anywhere near that bad or I can have them irrigated again before it gets to that point.  

So all right!  I just wrote a whole long paragraph about earwax.  Awesome stuff, man.  Awesome stuff.