HELP....unfortunate new guy.

[Wildcard]

There will be a whloe bunch of people that will tell you not to take it but I take it an hour before EVERY dive, just to be sure. As long as your clearing well before, it should be fine. Just don't take it six hours before and expect it to hold out.

 

[BillP]

It's unforunate you dived with medication.

SF

That seems to me to be a grossly inappropriate thing to say in this thread ScubaFreak, so I must have misunderstood what you meant. Can you clarify?

By the way, I was advised to use sutaphed before a dive to help with clearing. I hope this was not bad advise.

Sorry to hear about your problem, djfirelt. Many divers take (and are advised by their doctors to take) Sudafed (pseudoephedrine) and/or Afrin (oxymetazoline) before they dive to assist with equalizing. I do. If a diver can't equalize before the dive and they take a decongestant before they dive in order to be able to clear, there is the very real concern that the benefit from the medication will be insufficient to allow effective clearing during the whole dive leading to a barotrauma injury. (Some divers will tell you that they are afraid that the medication will "wear off" during the dive. That is a different concern than the medicine being insufficient. IMHO, those divers who are too stupid to read a clock and know when the medicine will "wear off" are too stupid to read dive tables or a dive computer and shouldn't be diving in the first place. But, hey, that's just my opinion.) Other divers are concerned about a theoretical possibility that Sudafed can increase the risk of CNS oxygen toxicity. You gave no indication in your post that you were unable to clear before taking Sudafed and Afrin or that you were anywhere near the O2 toxicity limits, so there is no reason to chastise you for using it. Decongestants do help some people with clearing, and using the medication could be why you didn't have a problem in your right ear too.

You're right that barotrauma with hearing loss is a very common injury with scubadiving. Usually the hearing loss and vertigo are due to fluid collecting behind the eardrum after middle ear barotrauma. When the swelling goes down, the fluid goes away, and the diver can clear effectively their hearing usually returns to normal, their vertigo resolves, and they can often return to diving and work on their equalization techniques. On occasion, however, the loss of hearing (and vertigo) can be due to an injury to the oval or round windows of the inner ear or other inner ear injury (eg "nerve" injury). When the inner ear is damaged the injury can heal and the effects resolve, but sometimes the damage is permanent. Some authorities would consider any inner ear injury a reason to end recreational diving, and I think that most would consider any permanent injury a reason to stop diving.

Good luck and hope this helps,

Bill

 

[Dive-aholic]

The next morning I woke up with severe dizzyness,A ringing hiss in my left ear and obvious left ear hearing loss.

What makes you say obvious hearing loss? Did the ringing cause you to not hear as well, or have you actually experienced hearing loss?

I went to an ent who told me this is probably permanent nerve damage. He says I have lost 70to 90% of my hearing in my left ear.

Did he do a hearing test, or he is just guessing?

I've had similar symptoms minus the dizziness. Had my ear checked out and it turned out to just be water in there. It lasted a few weeks. To me, based on the information you gave, it sounds like your might have been doing too good a job clearing and allowed water to get into your ear. Now it's stuck there until it gets absorbed on its own. I'd get the MRI and other tests ordered, but I'd get a 2nd opinion as well.