Hey everyone (and in particular hoping for a reply from Dr. Mike or others),
I'm a doctor from Dallas. My wife and I did some diving in Cozumel last week and upon surfacing from the 2nd of a 2 tank dive my wife started vomiting. At first we thought it was due to sea sickness as it was choppy, but she continued to have pressure in her ear, dizziness/vertigo, and tinnitus throughout the remainder of the day and into the evening. It was slowly improving throughout the day. The next day she skipped diving and continued to have somewhat milder symptoms. The third day she decided she felt well enough to dive again (in retrospect this was clearly a mistake, but we thought she just had acute sea sickness). She did OK during the 2 dives but again developed the same symptoms (although somewhat milder this time, no vomiting) which progressed into the evening and persisted the 4th day, we flew home the 5th day without any significant issues, and it has continued being relatively stable or maybe slightly improved with today being day 8. I didn't really know much about these conditions until I read up on it today, and now I'm very concerned that we didn't treat this seriously enough. I pulled some strings to get her into an ENT two days from now, but I'm unsure how knowledgeable they are about this, and I'm also wondering if two days is too long and we should take her into the ED. Further complicating this is that I'm on call all week and our daughter's daycare shut down to a gas leak and she's supposed to fly out this weekend for her sister's 40th so its a hectic week and she's not getting any rest.
I guess my main question is how you recommend we proceed from here. Is it OK to wait two more days for an office visit? Should she hurry to the ED? Should we insist on a quick procedure such as blood patch if the ENT doesn't seem well versed in this?
Thanks for any advice, I just want to optimize her recovery going forward.
I'm a doctor from Dallas. My wife and I did some diving in Cozumel last week and upon surfacing from the 2nd of a 2 tank dive my wife started vomiting. At first we thought it was due to sea sickness as it was choppy, but she continued to have pressure in her ear, dizziness/vertigo, and tinnitus throughout the remainder of the day and into the evening. It was slowly improving throughout the day. The next day she skipped diving and continued to have somewhat milder symptoms. The third day she decided she felt well enough to dive again (in retrospect this was clearly a mistake, but we thought she just had acute sea sickness). She did OK during the 2 dives but again developed the same symptoms (although somewhat milder this time, no vomiting) which progressed into the evening and persisted the 4th day, we flew home the 5th day without any significant issues, and it has continued being relatively stable or maybe slightly improved with today being day 8. I didn't really know much about these conditions until I read up on it today, and now I'm very concerned that we didn't treat this seriously enough. I pulled some strings to get her into an ENT two days from now, but I'm unsure how knowledgeable they are about this, and I'm also wondering if two days is too long and we should take her into the ED. Further complicating this is that I'm on call all week and our daughter's daycare shut down to a gas leak and she's supposed to fly out this weekend for her sister's 40th so its a hectic week and she's not getting any rest.
I guess my main question is how you recommend we proceed from here. Is it OK to wait two more days for an office visit? Should she hurry to the ED? Should we insist on a quick procedure such as blood patch if the ENT doesn't seem well versed in this?
Thanks for any advice, I just want to optimize her recovery going forward.