One heck of a certification story.....

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FFPEREZ

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Location
Southern Illinois
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SORRY ITS LONG

So here is the story. My wife and I signed up for o/w and dry suit. This first weekend went great (classroom and pool). Long days but went well. While we were rapidly approaching the open water check out dives, the Wednesday before our Saturday and Sunday dives, my wife contracts the measles…..

Seriously, who contracts the measles in the U.S. as an adult???? She is quarantined to the house and myself and our child have to stay away. This last for a couple of days, but we have to cancel the checkout dive weekend. I send an email to the owner of the quarry and he wishes her a healthy return. He is totally accommodating and even with the late notice is happy to cancel our class and wait till she is able to return to schedule another weekend.

Our schedules are quite busy and with my job it is hard for us to find a weekend free. We eventually find time and went this past Friday and Saturday. We left our house early in the morning with the camper in tow, a fun weekend of finishing our certification and camping on site at the quarry. We arrive at about 9, get our gear lined out, and get ready for our first dive.

We start our first dive, descend to a fifteen foot training platform and demonstrate mask clearing skills and a few others. We then go for a swim. We come upon a Cessna and explore it for a minute. My wife gets separated from the instructor and I, kind of. The instructor and I are next to each other no more than 7 feet from my wife looking at her. She can’t see us because she is slightly higher and her view is blocked by the plane. She makes a quick descent of about 4 feet and sees us and swims over. After the dive she says she has slight ear pain in her right ear.

We exit, fill out the logs, and get the gear ready for dive 2. She couldn’t get her right her to clear at the begging of the dive at 8 feet. So we called the dive. Her ear was bothering her just a little bit; we then put in a peroxide, alcohol, vinegar, and water mix. This seemed to help clear her ear and we begin dive number 3. At 10 feet she couldn’t get her right ear to clear again and gives the surface signal. At the surface she had tears of pain in her eyes and was saying she had severe pain from her ear radiating to her jaw. We give it some time and the pain goes minimizes, but is still there sat morning. She doesn’t dive at all Saturday and I did 3 wonderful dives.

She had a hearing test today and passed with flying colors. Tomorrow we have an appointment with the Ears Nose and Throat Dr. Hopefully she gets cleared to dive again and we can finish our certification. The LDS has been awesome through this whole ordeal and has emailed me to check on my wife to see how she is doing.
 
Make sure to keep us posted on how things are going. I hope your wife's ENT appointment goes well tomorrow and good luck with your certification.

Happy Diving! :)
 
Make sure to keep us posted on how things are going. I hope your wife's ENT appointment goes well tomorrow and good luck with your certification.

Happy Diving! :)

Thanks and I will.
 
Hope she gets a clean bill of health soon.
You LDS sounds great, cherish them!

Looking forward to hearing about how you (both) got your OW and are now completely hooked!

Rach xx
 
While your wife is waiting for her evaluation, she might benefit from watching this (long) video on ears and diving. Ear problems in new divers are common; quite often, people are just overloaded with all the things they have to remember to do, and the ears don't get taken care of until they are uncomfortable. It doesn't take all that long to cause swelling and pain, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a long-term problem.

I hope your wife recovers quickly. The normal hearing is a very good sign.
 
Equalizing gets easier as you dive more....vaccinations only last about 10 years, so strictly speaking, everyone older than 12 can get measles, including those who already has been diagnosed with Autism :)
 
I think the trick to equalizing is dont wait until you need to.
 
I wouldn't do do anything until seen by the doctor but as stated equalizing gets easier with more diving. I'll extend that to with more equalizing.

Once cleared by the doctor I suggest doing it daily. There is some technique to sneaking up on your ears with just enough pressure to get a gentle release without shutting the tubes down or hurting yourself.

On dive day do it once on the way to the site, when you arrive, when you get into your you can drop some of the clearings.

Pete
 
While your wife is waiting for her evaluation, she might benefit from watching this (long) video on ears and diving. Ear problems in new divers are common; quite often, people are just overloaded with all the things they have to remember to do, and the ears don't get taken care of until they are uncomfortable. It doesn't take all that long to cause swelling and pain, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a long-term problem.

I hope your wife recovers quickly. The normal hearing is a very good sign.

Thank you for the link to the video. Ill have her watch it and I'll watch it myself.

Equalizing gets easier as you dive more....vaccinations only last about 10 years, so strictly speaking, everyone older than 12 can get measles, including those who already has been diagnosed with Autism :)

I didn't know about the vaccinations only lasting 10 years, kind of an interesting tid bit of information :)

I wouldn't do do anything until seen by the doctor but as stated equalizing gets easier with more diving. I'll extend that to with more equalizing.

Once cleared by the doctor I suggest doing it daily. There is some technique to sneaking up on your ears with just enough pressure to get a gentle release without shutting the tubes down or hurting yourself.

On dive day do it once on the way to the site, when you arrive, when you get into your you can drop some of the clearings.

Pete

She says she does really well clearing her left ear, but for some reason she only has problems with her right. We did an explore scuba in Belize and she had problems clearing her right ear then. So before we took the scuba class we had gone to the ENT and he did a cat scan and some other test. He said she should have no problems diving. I don't understand while she can clear her left ear fine, but not her right.
 
As stated earlier, start clearing your (or her) ears long before you begin to feel the need. As soon as you begin descent start clearing. I have had dives where I had to focus on adding a little prophylactic pressure to my ears early, to avoid a problem.
If there is any pain at all, stop the descent, and ascend slightly and wait till the pressure clears, then slow begin the descent again. At this point you do not want to rush things.
Most dives I have no problem what so ever, and can do my descent quite quickly, but there are times I just have to slow down, and take my descent much more cautiously.
 

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