Diving with a cold

[RIdiverMike]

Yup, I know you're not supposed to. And I know a woman who used a nasal spray, had it wear off at 80ft, had a reverse squeeze and ruptured both her ear drums on ascent. Never dove again. And I had a grade 4 barotrauma myself in Cozumel as a rookie diver when I had caught a cold and not realized it, got a squeeze and the pain came quickly.

So I'm not planning anything foolish - I've seen and experienced some of the bad consequences - but am going to the Keys tomorrow with a bit of a head cold and wondered how other folks look at this, i.e., when do you consider yourself "done" with the cold? My simplistic criteria:
1. Can I clear my ears?
2. Can I breath comfortably without wheezing, sneezing, coughing fits, etc.
3. Do I feel well, i.e., clear headed, not feverish or overly tired

Do these sound reasonable to other folks?

Thx.

 

[tbone1004]

I take Mucinex and Sudafed about an hour before I dive. When I get to about 10 feet then again at 20 and again at the bottom I'll take my mask off and blow my nose out. It works quite well although is a little nasty for your buddy. I do this almost every time I dive at least at the bottom. My basic criteria is to equalize at the surface. If I can do it there then I'll be fine. Just make sure you equalize BEFORE you descent and equalize almost continuously the whole way down.

 

[raoulsttexas]

I'm no expert, but I can tell what worked for me.

My wife and I were just in coz on nov 13-20. she had a pretty bad cold that was nearly gone by the time we arrived. she wasn't blowing her nose much at that point, but still had mild pressure/discomfort on the plane ride. we just jumped in off the shore of our condo and did a few free dive descents to about 15ft. should could clear with no problem so we went for it. i stayed right be her side during the descent and she was fine. she had taken a shot of afrin about 2 hrs before the dive. we hit 102' and not a problem. however, she did have some MILD bleeding that was most likely caused from the afrin drying things up too much.

on the first ascent, she had a bit of pain. however, we figured out that if we ascended 5' per minute starting at 30' she had no problems. the problems (bleeding and discomfort) happened when we just joined the group and went from 60' up to the 15' safety stop. go a little slower on ascent and you should be ok.

i then got that same cold and was going diving up in puget sound the week after we got home. again, the cold had mostly subsided by the dive day, but i was still concerned. i cleared my ears on the surface, and then equalized literally on every breath during descent. EVERY! i had no problems.

so, again, no, you shoudn't dive with a cold. we ONLY went for it because we were on the tail end of the cold. we checked things out before we got on the boat to do a formal dive and we had EVERY intention of thumbing the dive if things were even remotely uncomfortable. once you get on a boat on vacation...that you've been planning forever and excited about, it's hard to have the mindset to call the dive. but be prepared to call the dive.

fwiw....

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I just, over the Thanksgiving week-end, went on a trip with a cold. My test was to drop down slowly while trying to clear ... without the use of decongestants. If I could clear down to 30 feet, I figured I was good to go.

The good news is that I was ... and ended up having two days of glorious diving.

The bad news is that the cold then settled into my chest ... and I'm still trying to get it out.

Decongestants can work ... I know people who use them regularly, whether with or without a cold. Just remember that in diving, what goes down MUST come up ... and blocks are, at best, painful. At worst, you can end up injured and out of the water for a long time ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Cave Diver]

I think the biggest danger of diving with a cold is the one you can't feel.

I can't recall the exact dynamics (maybe Lynne will chime in) but if you have congestion in the chest, you run a risk of lung barotrauma because air passages are blocked. To me this presents a much greater risk than sinus squeeze

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I think the biggest danger of diving with a cold is the one you can't feel.

I can't recall the exact dynamics (maybe Lynne will chime in) but if you have congestion in the chest, you run a risk of lung barotrauma because air passages are blocked. To me this presents a much greater risk than sinus squeeze

.. that may be what I was feeling at 160 feet ... when it felt like I couldn't get enough "air" (actually it was 18/45) ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Torben]

With the signs you describe it sounds like it wouldn't be a problem to dive. But if you have truble abort the dive on the way down just to be on the safe side.

I found that taking Sudafed about a half hour, and just before, a dive works doing the whole dive. Of cause depending the length but around an hour.
If problems arises on the way up, to prevent a revered block, try blowing your nose with of without your mask on.

Have a nice dive.

 

[TSandM]

It's actually fairly likely that, if you have enough going on in your lungs to put you at significant risk, you will have symptoms -- coughing, wheezing -- that should alert you. It IS possible to have localized obstruction from something and have no symptoms (a cave diver died a couple of years ago, and autopsy found he had a mass obstructing a bronchus that no one knew about), but infections with significant bronchospasm or obstruction are generally symptomatic in the young.

If you can easily clear your ears on land, do not have symptoms of sinus obstruction (fullness, pain, or purulent drainage), and are no longer coughing, you are probably going to be okay to carefully attempt a dive. ANY problems on the way day should be a red flag, though, since ascents aren't optional.

Edited to add that I would never, myself, do a dive if I couldn't equalize my ears without meds. Taking them as additional insurance is one thing, but knowing that, without the drug effect, you can't equalize, is taking more risk of hearing loss or (worse) permanent vertigo than I'm willing to accept.

 

[landlocked!!]

The ear barotrauma risk with diving with nasal or sinus congestion is not necessarily that you can't equalize on the way down. It's that despite being able to equalize on descent, you might find that the increased pressure in the middle ear can not as readily re-equilibrate on ascent (easier to force breathing gas through the eustachian tubes into the middle ear with a valsalva than it is for the gas under pressure to overcome eustachian tube obstruction in the reverse direction). Obviously, it you can't equalize on descent, it's a no-brainer, don't do the dive. It's a bit of a gamble with a cold.

 

[raoulsttexas]

At the risk of being a reductionist, I'm curious to know:

I'm gathering from some of the responses, that the sinus / headcold is a bit more tangible. ie you can check to see if clearing / equalizing your ears is possible. if not, no diving.

however, it sounds somewhat like the chest / lung (coughing, wheezing etc) is the real danger zone because we can't "test" it and therefore can't tell how our body will respond at depth or during ascent.

is that what I'm hearing?

obviously, I'm not implying that it's perfectly fine to dive with a head cold. I'm just curious about the chest issue.