Anyone else ever experienced this ear problem?

[CWMurf]

Have you guys heard anything about the "dive earplugs" that will equalize?

I have not so I can't comment on them. I personally see no need for them. The equalization I was referring to is in the middle ear. Even with an equalizing plug you will still have to compensate for the compression in the middle ear.

 

[Ayisha]

That happened to me two days before my o/w when I was practicing in the pool. I was trying to do the fin pivot and I just plunked to the bottom all of a sudden and my right ear made a loud painful pop, and then it seemed clear. I don't remember any other symptoms. I stopped using a weight belt in the pool, and then everything was ok.

I still did my O/W two and three days later. I was a little congested, took Sudafed, took a little time to descend, and my ear felt a little weird, but I managed. After the weekend, I had a bad cold, and my ear continued to buzz and feel like it was infected.

My doctor looked at it a couple of weeks after it originally happened. He said I had baratrauma, he could see that my right "middle ear had bled out", and there was fluid in my ear. He gave me antibiotics, and the ear seemed to be ok after a week.

At the time, it seemed reasonable that if I could equalize in my O/W, then everything must be ok, and it's difficult to not do your o/w, something you've wanted to do for so long. Now I might reconsider, but now I have the equalizing thing down pat, and I try to prevent the problem by not putting myself in the position of diving congested.

 

[pipedope]

To learn more and understand better what goes on with your ears during diving and how to make things easier and more pleasent go to;

http://faculty.washington.edu/ekay/index.html

and watch the streaming video.

 

[pj5]

I had ear problems when I took my OW, too, including a nasty ear squeeze on a diver rescue dry run. Having gotten a few dives under my belt and talked to some more experienced divers since then, I think they were due to all the ascending and descending you do during an open water class. Once I started doing pleasure dives where I stayed at a fairly constant depth the whole time and learned to maintain decent bouyancy control, I stopped having ear problems. Equalizing your ears gets to be second nature pretty quickly once you start diving a lot.

FWIW, I had stopped up ears for a couple weeks after my OW, too. Went to TWO doctors before I believed it was really not an ear infection, just a slight barotrauma.


added:
One more thing, I've heard of the ear plugs for diving, but would never use them for fear that they would get pushed so far into my ear at depth that I would not be able to get them out when I surfaced.

 

[Gregz]

Okay... so I've read everything people are writing on this, but is it possible that what happened was simply (not to be gross, but let's get real) simply a build-up of ear wax releasing from the inner ear walls? I have spoken to plenty of folks that have felt something of the same on their first couple dives...

 

[coach_izzy]

To learn more and understand better what goes on with your ears during diving and how to make things easier and more pleasent go to;

http://faculty.washington.edu/ekay/index.html

and watch the streaming video.

Thanks for posting the link! Excellent site, factual and VERY informative

 

[Damselfish]

Typically my ears are no problem on the first dives of a trip but get slower and crankier the more days in a row I dive. I tried the proplugs recently, there is no way they can get pushed into your ears and they worked really well for me. For whatever reason, they make it much easier for me to equalize. They're not a substitute for solving any sort of serious problem or knowing how to equalize properly, or a way to get around congestion.

 

[Green_Manelishi]

just to clarify...

after the two weeks of pain and having that plugged sensation in my ear.. it all went away. I am able to hear just fine and it's like it never happened... which is why it is so strange to me.

if I had ruptured my ear drum, I would have noticed a difference somehow. Went to my doctor and he stated that my ear drum didn't appear to be ruptured and that I had an ear infection as a likely result of the excess moisture...

thank you all for your quick responses... any other ideas?

Dude,

It's possible your eardrum healed and now there is no obvious sign of trauma.

I've ruptured my ear drums several times, never from diving though and I've also been told by Doctors that visually inspected my ears "there is no sign of a problem."

I insisted there was a problem so the Doctor used some sort of instrument that measured the resistance of my ear-drum to sound waves. The eardrum that he insisted did not "look" damaged had such a low reading that the scale did not even reference it. I was off to a specialist who told me he'd not seen such a mess in a while. I was out of the water for weeks.

It's probable that the water that entered your middle ear, where it does not belong, eventually drained through your eustachian tubes as your eardrum healed.

See a different doctor.