Ear / Sinus Squeeze

[soitstorms]

Hi there -

I was on my 12th dive (ever) and my first of this vacation, and I didn't equalize often enough on my descent. I had pain in my right ear, ascended some and was able to clear without a problem. During the dive I had no trouble, but I felt like there was some water in my nose. As I ascended my ears had trouble equalizing at first, but wet clear by the time I had my gear off. It was then I discovered that it was some blood and mucus in my nose / mask. I never felt any sharp pain in my sinus cavity. My nose stopped bleeding very quickly, it is only uncomfortable to the degree of feeling like I had water in my nose. My right ear still feels some very minor discomfort about an hour later. I had a lot of ear infections as a child due to allergies so there is some scar tissue on that eardrum. I would like to continue diving this trip, is this an awful idea to give it another shot tomorrow?

 

[fmerkel]

Probably not a good idea tomorrow. You've 'sprained' both your nose and ear with squeeze. This causes inflammation and swelling, which will make clearing all the harder if not impossible. You could really damage something. You need to give it time to calm down and normalize before you make another attempt. Go snorkel. Had to do exactly that on my very first dive trip. Trashed my sinuses and didn't do my ears a lot of good.

THEN, you need to be REALLY careful of your clearing technique, and pay attention to both your ear and sinus spaces. ANY pressure, needs to be promptly dealt with or you don't proceed with the dive. Unfortunately for sinuses you can't 'equalize'. Well, you can encourage it just a little with some.....very....gentle......valsalva.

Sinuses mostly have to clear themselves. If they won't do so with a nice slow descent you need to look into medical/allergy, pharmaceutical, and at the extreme sinus surgery intervention. A session with a good ENT, a diving ENT would be all the more useful.

Awareness and technique are paramount for good clearing. Pseudofed can be helpful. Afrin can be useful for the nose on an occasional basis. Non-sedating antihistamines can be useful if you have allergies. Over the counter nasal steroids can be quite helpful if you have chronic allergies affecting your nose. Chronic nasal congestion will also indicate probably chronic Eustachian swelling so clearing up the nose can also help the ears.

So called scar tissue on the eardrum itself is of no particular concern except if it indicates a tissue weakness. What you need to be concerned with is the state of the sinuses and Eustachian canal.

 

[CuzzA]

See how you feel in the morning. My guess is tonight the discomfort is going to get worse and you're done diving for a while. Of course I hope that is not the case.

 

[claymore]

If you have sinus issues one of the cheapest and easiest solutions that will probably help is doing sinus irrigations once or twice even three times a day as a daily routine. you can get several types of irrigation systems at just about any drug store, NeilMed squeeze bottle, Neti Pots of multiple types. they all use a prepackaged salt and sodium bicarbonate mixture to put into the irrigation water. The sinus rinses help keep the sinuses open and reduse inflammation which can make clearing your ears easier because the sinus tissue is not hindering air movement through the eustasion tubes. they also help prevent sinus infections which are not fun to try and dive with.

If you are having ear and sinus pain it may get worse as the dive trip goes on and the tissues get more irritated. A blown ear drum or ear barotrama or sinus damage will stop your dive trip cold.

 

[boat sju]

Are you somewhere you can get to a Ready Care tomorrow? Could be the bloody nose was just from the saltwater irritating your sinuses but . . .

 

[claymore]

I get very minor nose bleeds fairly regularly and think it is a combination of ear clearing, my right ear sometimes is little hard to clear,and a little bit of mask/sinus squeeze. If the nose bleed is very minor you may have a tendency to get a small amount of sinus/nasal damage.

Very minor nose bleeds happen to some diver occasionally.

 

[w3dge]

I used to get a little blood in my mask when I first started diving, even with no apparent problems or difficulties on the dive (clearing or otherwise). Never caused me any issue or made me miss any dives. I can't remember the last time I saw any blood now though, its been quite a while.

 

[mainedvr]

I used to get a little blood in my mask when I first started diving, even with no apparent problems or difficulties on the dive (clearing or otherwise). Never caused me any issue or made me miss any dives. I can't remember the last time I saw any blood now though, its been quite a while.

My wife had the same issue but no longer does that I have seen.

 

[archer1960]

Take some time (a dive or a day) to recover. I skipped a dive in Cozumel to give my ears a chance to recover, and was glad I did.