Three weeks after my facelift my ears feel blocked and I can HEAR myself chewing. Why did nobody mention the ears?

Lift was 14 April, SMAS with a bit of neck work, and the face itself is doing everything the leaflets promised. What the leaflets never mentioned: my EARS. Both feel blocked, like the descent on a flight that never finishes, and eating has become a private percussion concert. Toast is deafening. An apple is out of the question. I can hear my own voice booming inside my head when I talk on the phone.

I read every recovery guide going before surgery and I was braced for swelling, bruising, numbness, the lot. Not one word about ears. The incisions go round them, obviously, but nobody said the ears themselves would join in. My glasses hurt sitting on top of everything too, so I'm currently reading with them balanced on the end of my nose like a Victorian librarian.

Is this a hearing thing I need to worry about? Did something get into my ear during surgery? Three weeks feels late for new weirdness and my follow-up isn't for another fortnight.

Oh the chewing! Nobody believes you until it happens to them. Mine were blocked from about week two to week five, worst first thing in the morning, and crunchy food sounded like walking on gravel inside my own skull. It faded so gradually I couldn't tell you the day it stopped.

One practical thing: at my follow-up the nurse looked in with the little scope and found a plug of dried blood sitting in the left canal from surgery. She teased it out and that ear cleared literally on the spot, like surfacing from a swimming pool. The right sorted itself out over another week or two. So don't suffer in silence for a fortnight, ring and ask if someone can look in the canals, it takes them two minutes.

January lift here and I had exactly this, and I'll confess where my 3am research took me: I convinced myself fluid had got into my middle ear and started reading about eustachian tubes, and then a woman in another group told me that hearing your own chewing means the surgeon damaged your JAW JOINT. Cue two very bad evenings.

Neither theory survived contact with my surgeon, who was almost annoyingly relaxed about it. Blocked feeling gone by about week six for me. On the glasses: I switched to my lightest frames for a month and sat the arms on a folded bit of cotton pad behind each ear, because the arm rests right where the scar runs and mine was tender for ages, the same territory covered in facelift scars. Worked well enough that I kept doing it after it stopped being necessary.

Mild version here after my deep plane, more fullness than blockage, gone by a month. The earring side is worth planning though. My lobes were numb for months (the lobes are always last, as we established at length in the numb-earlobe thread) and a numb lobe can't tell you an earring is too heavy or has snagged. I stayed with nothing, then tiny studs from about month three once I could actually feel them going in, and saved the heavy ones for much later. No drama as a result, which I count as the strategy working.

The reassuring answer first, Gail: a facelift is performed entirely outside the ear canal, and blocked ears with loud chewing at three weeks almost never means anything has happened to your hearing. What you are describing has three mundane causes that arrive together, and they explain every symptom in this thread.

First, the incisions run along the tragus, the small cartilage flap guarding the canal, and around the ear, so the tissue surrounding the canal entrance is swollen. A canal is only about 7 millimetres wide, so modest peri-auricular swelling narrows it noticeably. Second, a little blood from surgery often dries in the canal itself; finding and removing a plug at the first follow-up, exactly as Rosemary describes, is common, and clearance is often immediate. Third, and this is the part with a name worth knowing: a partly blocked canal produces the occlusion effect. Sound conducted through your own bones, which is mainly your voice and your jaw working, is trapped and amplified, by up to roughly 20 decibels at low pitches. That is why toast is suddenly deafening while the doorbell sounds normal. Plug your ears with your fingers and hum and you can demonstrate it to yourself in five seconds.

Timeline: this usually eases between weeks three and six as the swelling drains, and is gone for nearly everyone by two to three months, in step with the wider settling arc in facelift recovery week by week. Cheryl's two theories can be retired: fluid has not entered the middle ear, and chewing sounding loud is sound transmission, not joint damage. What is NOT on the mundane list: ear pain that is worsening, discharge, fever, or hearing that seems genuinely reduced rather than muffled and boomy. Any of those wants your surgeon promptly, and occasionally an ear specialist with a proper look and a hearing test. Two requests: ring your clinic rather than waiting a fortnight, since checking the canals is quick, and please keep cotton buds away from a healing canal, whatever the itch tells you.

Closing the loop. Rang the clinic as instructed, they saw me that week. Right ear: dried blood, removed in about ninety seconds, instant surround sound, I nearly applauded. Left ear cleared itself around week five with a popping sensation like coming down a mountain road.

Chewing is back to its correct volume, the librarian glasses era is over, and yesterday I put my first small studs in, felt them go in too, which after reading Annelise I'm treating as a bonus milestone. Adding my vote to the pile: someone put the EARS in the recovery leaflets please.