dmg6768
Registered
Hello,
My wife and I went to Bonaire earlier this month for our honeymoon and she experienced a strange feeling during ascent on our two dives.
A little background on us. We are recently certified and don't have a whole lot of experience so we picked easy dives in Bonaire. She has, since a young age, always had problems with her ears (plane trips can be extremely painful) and she experienced problems while getting her certification with equalization as well. She said that sometimes if she went too fast when we got to our bottom depth she would have to sit for a second and gather herself because she would feel very disoriented. Learning this we decided to take our descents at a much slower pace. This would help sometimes, but not always and it seems to be one ear more than the other. On our last dive during certification when she surfaced she actually had a slight bloody nose, but no other strange feelings.
Fast forward a few months to August and we do a shallow (15') dive in Florida and she experiences no problems other than her normal difficulty equalizing. We went slow so it wasn't a big problem.
Now here we are in Bonaire from the 11th to the 18th of November. We go to Buddy Dive to do our orientation dive and get weights set up etc....We do our normal slow descent, but she seems to be having a little more difficulty equalizing this time. Particularly one ear, eventually we get it all taken care of and go down to about 45' and enjoy the nice views. I'm leading the way after about 20 minutes or so I gradually start to decrease our depth. right around 30' I feel a tug on my arm and get the signal to stop. I stop and wait, then we proceed a minute later. We finish our dive with safety stop and all and surface. At the surface I ask her why she wanted me to stop. She said she she felt like she was about to pass out for a bit, but the feeling subsided. I attributed this to her not being able to equalize on the way down possibly screwing with her on the way up.
We decide to try another dive the next day at Oil Slick. We start our dive by swimming out to the buoy and using the rope as a descent line so she can control her depth and aid in her equalization. Some difficulty equalizing but not as much as at buddy dive. We dive down to about 45 feet again and enjoy the sights. This time when we turn around I don't head back on the exact same path as we took out (parallel to the shore line), I take an angled approach towards the buoy line, and that way we can ascend with the slope of the ground slowly and safely. We reach 15 feet and level off for our safety stop and reach the buoy line. After the stop we ascend slowly and right at about 10 feet she grabs me again and I can tell she's feeling woozy. Her eyelids are sort of half closed and she has that look like she is very tired. We surface and he's got a bloody nose again and tells me that she felt like she was gonna pass out again.
After that, I said no more dives for the rest of the trip until we saw an ENT back home and hopefully find out what's going on. I've done a little research myself and I was wondering if this was some sort of alternobaric vertigo? She says that she doesn't feel like anything is spinning, she just feels like, and I quote, "I'm about to have an out of body experience". We haven't set up an appointment with an ENT yet, but that's coming soon. I don't want to dive again until she sees one. We are also considering proplugs, but I don't really have a lot of faith that those will help.
Has anyone experienced this or known of anyone that has? I'd love to get some ideas and recommendations before we visit the ENT.
Thank you in advance for any help.
My wife and I went to Bonaire earlier this month for our honeymoon and she experienced a strange feeling during ascent on our two dives.
A little background on us. We are recently certified and don't have a whole lot of experience so we picked easy dives in Bonaire. She has, since a young age, always had problems with her ears (plane trips can be extremely painful) and she experienced problems while getting her certification with equalization as well. She said that sometimes if she went too fast when we got to our bottom depth she would have to sit for a second and gather herself because she would feel very disoriented. Learning this we decided to take our descents at a much slower pace. This would help sometimes, but not always and it seems to be one ear more than the other. On our last dive during certification when she surfaced she actually had a slight bloody nose, but no other strange feelings.
Fast forward a few months to August and we do a shallow (15') dive in Florida and she experiences no problems other than her normal difficulty equalizing. We went slow so it wasn't a big problem.
Now here we are in Bonaire from the 11th to the 18th of November. We go to Buddy Dive to do our orientation dive and get weights set up etc....We do our normal slow descent, but she seems to be having a little more difficulty equalizing this time. Particularly one ear, eventually we get it all taken care of and go down to about 45' and enjoy the nice views. I'm leading the way after about 20 minutes or so I gradually start to decrease our depth. right around 30' I feel a tug on my arm and get the signal to stop. I stop and wait, then we proceed a minute later. We finish our dive with safety stop and all and surface. At the surface I ask her why she wanted me to stop. She said she she felt like she was about to pass out for a bit, but the feeling subsided. I attributed this to her not being able to equalize on the way down possibly screwing with her on the way up.
We decide to try another dive the next day at Oil Slick. We start our dive by swimming out to the buoy and using the rope as a descent line so she can control her depth and aid in her equalization. Some difficulty equalizing but not as much as at buddy dive. We dive down to about 45 feet again and enjoy the sights. This time when we turn around I don't head back on the exact same path as we took out (parallel to the shore line), I take an angled approach towards the buoy line, and that way we can ascend with the slope of the ground slowly and safely. We reach 15 feet and level off for our safety stop and reach the buoy line. After the stop we ascend slowly and right at about 10 feet she grabs me again and I can tell she's feeling woozy. Her eyelids are sort of half closed and she has that look like she is very tired. We surface and he's got a bloody nose again and tells me that she felt like she was gonna pass out again.
After that, I said no more dives for the rest of the trip until we saw an ENT back home and hopefully find out what's going on. I've done a little research myself and I was wondering if this was some sort of alternobaric vertigo? She says that she doesn't feel like anything is spinning, she just feels like, and I quote, "I'm about to have an out of body experience". We haven't set up an appointment with an ENT yet, but that's coming soon. I don't want to dive again until she sees one. We are also considering proplugs, but I don't really have a lot of faith that those will help.
Has anyone experienced this or known of anyone that has? I'd love to get some ideas and recommendations before we visit the ENT.
Thank you in advance for any help.
