Jdesjardins
New
Hi everyone, I have a serious horror story for you all and I’m hoping to learn more about if anyone else has had this issue and what can be done to prevent further people from having this issue.
It started with my open water certification. I had emotional problems that I didn’t realize and didn’t think I deserved to be healthy so when me, my buddy and our two instructors were headed back to shore underwater I was terribly nervous because my buddy was behind me and wouldn’t stay by my side. I was trying to keep up with the instructor who was leading the group and it’s low visibility so I had to keep turning my head back and forth to make sure my buddy was still behind me. I got a ton of water in my ears and it’s been almost a year now and most of it’s still in there. I tried an ear dryer and it was very painful and a small amount did eventually come out but.
I didn’t have this idea until recently unfortunately but now I’m thinking I may need to get a surgeon to put a catheter through the hole in my ear to pump the water out. Everyone misunderstands the anatomy of the ear I think. If you watch this video there’s a good demonstration of how the ear actually has a mechanism to block water and how you have to pump the Tragal cartilage to get it deeper .
The problem with this is it gets stuck in there. I know what you all are thinking; it will evaporate. I swear on my life I’ve had lots of water stuck in my ear for about a year and only rare occasions I feel minuscule amounts evaporate.
Now for the really terrible thing. About six months ago I read in a couple posts on ScubaBoard (I think they were really old) that if you put rubbing alcohol in your ear it will help evaporate the water. Well I put one drop of 99% alcohol in my ear and it literally was the most painful thing I’ve ever been through. I was writhing around on the floor for four hours. Now here’s the stupid thing I did. I read online that if rubbing alcohol causes pain in your ears that it’s because you have an infection. So that made me think okay well maybe now I’ve killed off the infection so next time it’ll actually work. Literally again only days later I was writhing around on the floor for four hours. I went to the doctor soon after this and he told me I had zero infection. He also said that because he couldn’t see water in my ears, there was no water. I’m telling you people are wrong about the anatomy of the ear.
The problem with all that is the biological aftermath of that. I’ve had horrible tinnitus since putting alcohol in my ears and my neck is stiffer than you can imagine. The only way I’m going to heal this is with a thousand massages.
I’d feel a lot less bad if I could prevent this from happening to someone else. Both times I put the rubbing alcohol in my ear it was only one drop. So I’m asking: has anyone here had this happen to them or someone they know? I’m guessing it’s a pretty rare occurrence since people on the old ScubaBoard threads really were saying that it helped them not hurt them. I’m also wondering what the hell is so different about the anatomy/physiology of my ear that I would be so affected.
Also I think it’s be great if anyone who’s worried about this would have a way to put only like 1/10th of a drop of rubbing alcohol in their ears at a time. I wouldn’t want to mix that with water because then you get more water trapped in your ear. But then if you only do 1/10th of a drop it might be impossible to get inside your ear. Any ideas for a solution to this?
This is my first post. Nice to meet you all. I do literally plan to become an expert scuba diver within ten years but I need to heal from this trauma first
It started with my open water certification. I had emotional problems that I didn’t realize and didn’t think I deserved to be healthy so when me, my buddy and our two instructors were headed back to shore underwater I was terribly nervous because my buddy was behind me and wouldn’t stay by my side. I was trying to keep up with the instructor who was leading the group and it’s low visibility so I had to keep turning my head back and forth to make sure my buddy was still behind me. I got a ton of water in my ears and it’s been almost a year now and most of it’s still in there. I tried an ear dryer and it was very painful and a small amount did eventually come out but.
I didn’t have this idea until recently unfortunately but now I’m thinking I may need to get a surgeon to put a catheter through the hole in my ear to pump the water out. Everyone misunderstands the anatomy of the ear I think. If you watch this video there’s a good demonstration of how the ear actually has a mechanism to block water and how you have to pump the Tragal cartilage to get it deeper .
The problem with this is it gets stuck in there. I know what you all are thinking; it will evaporate. I swear on my life I’ve had lots of water stuck in my ear for about a year and only rare occasions I feel minuscule amounts evaporate.
Now for the really terrible thing. About six months ago I read in a couple posts on ScubaBoard (I think they were really old) that if you put rubbing alcohol in your ear it will help evaporate the water. Well I put one drop of 99% alcohol in my ear and it literally was the most painful thing I’ve ever been through. I was writhing around on the floor for four hours. Now here’s the stupid thing I did. I read online that if rubbing alcohol causes pain in your ears that it’s because you have an infection. So that made me think okay well maybe now I’ve killed off the infection so next time it’ll actually work. Literally again only days later I was writhing around on the floor for four hours. I went to the doctor soon after this and he told me I had zero infection. He also said that because he couldn’t see water in my ears, there was no water. I’m telling you people are wrong about the anatomy of the ear.
The problem with all that is the biological aftermath of that. I’ve had horrible tinnitus since putting alcohol in my ears and my neck is stiffer than you can imagine. The only way I’m going to heal this is with a thousand massages.
I’d feel a lot less bad if I could prevent this from happening to someone else. Both times I put the rubbing alcohol in my ear it was only one drop. So I’m asking: has anyone here had this happen to them or someone they know? I’m guessing it’s a pretty rare occurrence since people on the old ScubaBoard threads really were saying that it helped them not hurt them. I’m also wondering what the hell is so different about the anatomy/physiology of my ear that I would be so affected.
Also I think it’s be great if anyone who’s worried about this would have a way to put only like 1/10th of a drop of rubbing alcohol in their ears at a time. I wouldn’t want to mix that with water because then you get more water trapped in your ear. But then if you only do 1/10th of a drop it might be impossible to get inside your ear. Any ideas for a solution to this?
This is my first post. Nice to meet you all. I do literally plan to become an expert scuba diver within ten years but I need to heal from this trauma first