Originally Posted by bhutocracy

Don't listen to this, it's bullshit. I used to get my ears flushed every 6 months as one of my ear canals is weird and fills up with wax pretty badly, which given I have tinnitus is torture (the ringing is magnified when the wax closes over). Never had an infection from it. Then again my doctor never used storm drain water from the gutter out the front so yay for science.
There is nothing wrong with getting your ears flushed. Given you only really do it when there is an issue it's fine and doesn't do anything untoward. It's only going to promote more wax if you do it monthly or something crazy.
You should have had it flushed on the spot and probably gone without the antibiotics (unless you also scratched your ear drum with the q-tip on top of compacting the wax). Antibiotics aren't going to fix compacted wax.

If you are going to use q-tips, the only "good" way is to only just insert them and very angled so the tip is pointing at the back of your head, circle them, so you're collecting wax from the "sides" near the entrance not deeper in the canal where you are going to risk damage. And you can only really do it as maintenence. Once your ears are full you're going to push the wax further in almost no matter what.