What would you do if you found a tooth lodged in your ear? Or any other part of your body, other than your mouth? For a 47-year old man in England, the tooth found in his ear was a welcoming relief. For 33-years, Stephen Hirst endured a terrible earache that no doctor could define nor cure. Hirst had tried a lot of options before finally going to Royal Hallamshire, to give it another go. The nurse at the hospital did some preliminary work and with a use of tweezers, she pulled the tooth out of his middle ear, solving the earache mystery.
How could the other doctors miss this small piece of enamel that was lodged in Hirst’s ear canal? It is common that x-rays and other tests are not 100% accurate. That could account as to why this tooth, which was close to the bones in the middle ear, was missed for all those years of treatment.
The mystery however remains as to how the tooth got into his ear in the first place. Hirst suspects that it could have occurred while as a child when he fell on his ear. However, as that is not for certain, the truth might never be known.
The good news is that, Stephen Hirst not only gets to live the rest of his years, pain free, but he has a small tooth as souvenir, a testament to his pain free life.
So next time you have an earache, you might want to ask the doctors to check for some missing teeth that might have made their way to your eardrum.
