I've got a funny story that really happened to another dentist friend here in Tulsa. He went shooting and thought at one time he got the gun a little too close to his ear. He felt the blast in his eardrum and couldn't hear as well after that. The next day he woke up with a dull sense of hearing and it got worse and worse as the days went on. He finally went to the ENT and they found the source of his problem....he had left his ear plugs in and by now they had embedded deep into his ears. True Story happened just last week.