June 2008
It was a simple kiss. Not the type of thing one would guess to be a hurtful thing. It certainly wasn’t something Gail Schwartzman’s 4-year-old daughter expected to hurt her mother when she gave it. Mom had been out of the house that day, and the little girl missed her.

“When I returned, I went to say a big hello to my daughter. She was 4-years-old at the time. She was sitting on the floor watching TV, and she had really missed me. So I sat on the floor next to her. She grabbed me and gave me a hug and a really big kiss on the left ear. And while she was doing it, it felt like she was sucking the air out of my head. I couldn’t push her away because I had this terrible sensation in my head,” Schwartzman recalls. “When she had finished, I had no hearing in that ear. The hearing slowly came back, but with screeching noises in my ear.”

As it turns out, the suction from her daughters kiss had displaced the woman’s eardrum, paralyzing a tiny trio of bones in her ear. It left her with residual sounds in her head, or a condition known as tinnitus, usually caused only by lengthy exposure to loud noises — those over 110 decibels. It’s frequently seen in rock musicians or those who frequent concerts. It’s a rarity for something like a kiss to cause damage to the eardrum. It’s caused by damage to hair cells in the inner ear’s cochlea, the structure that transmits sound
signals to the brain.

The incident will be the subject of a report in a medical journal to be released in June. Levi Reiter, who has studied Gail’s case, states that “it’s possible that things will get better as time goes by. Her tinnitus has gotten better, (and) the other ear is just fine,” he says.

But perhaps the most serious injury wasn’t to Gail, but to her daughter. Now 6-years-old, Gail says that it has left a deep emotional scar on the child. As her mother recounted the story to reporters, the little girl burst into tears, apologizing to her mother for what happened. It’s hard not to want to cry along with her.

This is an extremely rare occurrence. Researchers searched the literature and could only find one other case of a kiss damaging a person’s eardrum. Thank goodness for that. No little girl should have to feel guilty over a kiss. That must have been one heck of a smackeroo. While parents shouldn’t worry about such things, this story can serve as part of a more general overall lesson: be gentle around the ears. While this is a rare event, other ear injuries are much more common. No hitting, no smacking, and keep those kisses on the gentler side.