An Australian woman recently shared her experience of using cotton swabs to clean out her ears, to a could-have-been deadly infection – huh, what?

The woman who’s known as Jasmine, 37-years old and said she has been using cotton swabs to clean her ears for years, but somehow eventually developed a subtle ringing in her left ear.

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Jasmine stated that she often noticed a smelly brown discharge, sometimes with blood, when she cleaned her ears with a cotton bud. After being referred to a specialist, the doctor told her that she was suffering from a severe bacterial infection that was eating away the skull behind her ear.

The infection is due to a loose strand of cotton from a cotton bud. Jasmine has to cancel her honeymoon trip for her surgery. The surgeons had to reconstruct her ear canal and take out the affected tissue during a five-hours surgery.

She said this during an interview:

“The cotton had been collecting and festering for as long as five years, and my skull bone behind the ear was paper-thin” 

She’s now warning others to be wary of using the swabs, which technically are not recommended to be used for that purpose. A research shows that using cotton swab to clean ears are not a good option.

Here’s a tip – you can go to the ear, eye, nose specialist and the doctor will clean it up for you (thoroughly) for a few bucks.

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