Damn cotton buds

last night, while doing the ear-cleaning routine with a Q-Tip, I removed the Q-Tip from my ear and imagine my shockhorror when the cotton tip was missing! The cotton tip got stucked in my ear and I couldn't get it out! At this point i got really panicked and started yelling at everyone including my dad who was taking his nap lol
It didn't exactly hurt or impair my hearing, but knowing that a bit of cotton was lodged in my ear was somewhat freaky.

So my dad brought me to the nearest hospital, the doc tried to get it out but couldn't. and the cotton went even deeper. At this point i really lost hope liao and thinking "omg im really going to be deaf" He then suggested me to go to Ripas A&E Department. When we arrived it was nearly 10 and the hospital was still packed with people, most of them seemed to have an asthma attack or something. We waited for like 2 hours ( Emergency, HA!) before my name was called.
D: "So whats wrong? Asthma?"
Me: "Uhmmm no. There's a cotton bud stucked in my left ear"
He looked at me for like 5 secs and said "Oh" It was sooo obvious he was trying so hard not to laugh. God i was soo embarassed!

He said the ear drum is not protected by anything other than the cartilage surrounding it. He used a special syringe to pull it, and the darned piece of cotton came out in less than 5 minutes. (Pheewwww!!)

And then he started giving me lectures blahblah. I wasnt really listening cause i was sooo sleepy ( it was already 12++) He said something like we should never never ever clean our ears with Q-tips. The ear has its own internal cleaning mechanism. Fats and oils in the ear canal trap any particles and transport them out of the ear as wax. This falls out of the ear without us noticing.
When we try to clean the ear, this wax gets pushed back and compacted.

Got home at nearly 1am. I'll probably never go near Q-tips again. hahaha