ear question, please

[rawls]

Agree...Call DAN...You may also want to get on the dive medicine section and ask this question.

 

[rjsimp]

Since I've been diving, I have had this little problem. Does anyone else experience this and what is it??? My ears are clean as evidenced by using ear wax remover and flushing, nothing there.

But, if I bend over, I sound like I'm in a drum (to me). Also, it reduces outside sounds like I have a finger over my ear. I dived over a week ago and it is still here. Actually i's been that way since I was in Cayman over a month ago. I have no problem equalizing my ears underwater (they make a little squeek when I do).

Also, I always have bright orange stuff that comes out of my nose that the DM said was the result of little capillaries bursting in sinuses. So, I wonder if I have blown some of that stuff up the eustatian tubes when I equalize. Can anyone tell me if they've had the same problem, and what to do about it? Thanks.

What you most likely have is some "fluid" in your middle ear from some barotrauma on your last dives. It was explained to me like this when I got it a few years ago. Basically, when you go down, if you start to feel pain because you aren't equalizing often enough, you have obviously gone down too far without equalizing. Given enough opportunity and if you don't burst your ear, your body will equalize the space with fluid (blood most likely).

When you are done with the dive, you feel like you have water in your ear still. After a few days and even weeks its pretty weird because it can be fine until you bend over, then it feels like all of a sudden your ears are plugged up. In reality its the fluid shifting in your ear and making it sound plugged up. My ENT told me there really isn't any magic cure for it once you have done it. I was taking advil (to reduce swelling of the tube and let it drain) and he prescribed a sterioid nasal spray to also reduce the swelling. Basically, you have to wait for the fluid to be re-absorbed back into your body.

Definitely go see an ENT to make sure you didn't damage things worse, and see if you can get a steroid nasal spray to use. I use mine a couple of months before diving on a daily basis now and continue to use it through diving. Where I used to be tight and had a hard time clearing, I am able to clear much easier now and have never had barotrauma since. Of course I am VERY good about making sure and clear even if there is the slightest presure on my ears as I do my initial decent now where before I would sometimes push it. There's no shame in going up a few feet to clear before continuing back down. I would rather be the last one down and not have the problems, but now I am sometimes the first down.

The orange in your mask is sinus barotrauma. Again, I have a deviated septum and in my sinuses it doesn't take much before I get a blockage in there. I never feel any pain, but when I come up I can tell it happened because of the blood in my mucus. Its again, your body filling the air voids that don't get cleared. The nose one isn't really anything to worry about according to my ENT unless it developed into a nose bleed or something which it never has. I just make sure and blow it out good on the surface. One thing I found that helped reduce this with me a lot was to use a mask with a nose purge so I could keep the nose pocket completely free of water. When my nose stays dry, I don't have a problem. Its almost like I'm alergic to the salt water because if my nose sits in it, I have a hard time clearing and I get a lot of sinus during the dive.

Hope this helps and find a GOOD ENT! One that understands diving and doesn't tell you to stop diving as a cure.

 

[highlandfarmwv]

I'm sure you are right, and I believe you! Thank you so much for all the input, folks.