Seeing this post made me physically cringe. I am "The Public."

In my late 20s, my ear started hurting. I was utterly convinced it was just a stubborn clump of earwax. I went to the pharmacy and bought one of those bulb syringes for rinsing ears. The pharmacist calmly and explicitly instructed me: "Make sure you only use lukewarm water." I went home, washed my ear canal, and nothing happened. I figured I'd just give it a few days to loosen up.

Over the next couple of days, the pain escalated to an excruciating level. I'm talking find-chair, put-my-head-in-my-lap kinda pain. And as my son had just been born, I was operating on a good mix of extreme pain and severe sleep deprivation.

Eventually, i came to the conclusion that hotter water = more wax melting, and if lukewarm water didn't work, maybe it just needs more heat. The hotter the water, the better chance it has of melting the wax, right? So, I boiled some water. And with zero hesitation, I injected boiling hot water directly into my ear canal.

It was not earwax.

I ended up at the doctor, where I learned that the initial agony was actually a severe case of otitis media (a middle ear infection). And thanks to my brilliant home remedy, I had managed to add a scorched ear canal and a secondary outer ear infection right on top of it.

So yeah. When that optometrist said, "Look at me. I want you to understand that I mean water that has been boiled and has since cooled down," he was talking to me. I am the guy.