all4scuba05
Contributor
I went spearfishing for fluke in 10-15' of water for 50 minutes two Mondays ago. I then woke up Wednesday with right ear problems. It felt "full" and with a constant "hummimg" sound. To hear my wife speak I had to face her with my left ear. There was no pain. I was able to pessurize and depressurize both my ears(was trying to see if maybe I had a blocked eustachian tube.
I went in to see a doctor. He looked in and saw no redness, fluid, or trauma. He then did the tuning fork test. Clear tone on left and "static" sound on right. He set me up with a hearing test a few days later.
Hearing test: He did a test to see if drums are vibrating well. No problem with that. As a matter of fact right ear scored higher. On to the "tone" test. I've lost some hearing on my right ear in the low tones range. Keep in mind that My ear still felt "stuffed" and with a constant humming sound with an occasional tone ring for a second or two. He sets me up with an appointment with an ENT.
Couple days later I wake up and no more "fullness", just noise in right ear. Next day, no symptoms at all but I go to my ENT appointment that day anyway. I have no complaints. We talk a little. He's a diver as well. So I ask him what he thinks might have caused it. Nothing concrete. Maybe it was the dive, maybe not. I now have an MRI appointment coming up.
He did state that it's possible that my dive could have been the culprit. Maybe overpressurizing had traumatized my inner ear. Maybe a nitrogen bubble did some damage. My symptoms didn't
show up until 2 days after the dive though. He told me to wait for the MRI.
My question is...I've got almost 100 dives and never had an ear problem or problem clearing. Does this seem like something related to the dive? Could "overpressurizing" cause damage to the inner ear? In what way?
I went in to see a doctor. He looked in and saw no redness, fluid, or trauma. He then did the tuning fork test. Clear tone on left and "static" sound on right. He set me up with a hearing test a few days later.
Hearing test: He did a test to see if drums are vibrating well. No problem with that. As a matter of fact right ear scored higher. On to the "tone" test. I've lost some hearing on my right ear in the low tones range. Keep in mind that My ear still felt "stuffed" and with a constant humming sound with an occasional tone ring for a second or two. He sets me up with an appointment with an ENT.
Couple days later I wake up and no more "fullness", just noise in right ear. Next day, no symptoms at all but I go to my ENT appointment that day anyway. I have no complaints. We talk a little. He's a diver as well. So I ask him what he thinks might have caused it. Nothing concrete. Maybe it was the dive, maybe not. I now have an MRI appointment coming up.
He did state that it's possible that my dive could have been the culprit. Maybe overpressurizing had traumatized my inner ear. Maybe a nitrogen bubble did some damage. My symptoms didn't
show up until 2 days after the dive though. He told me to wait for the MRI.
My question is...I've got almost 100 dives and never had an ear problem or problem clearing. Does this seem like something related to the dive? Could "overpressurizing" cause damage to the inner ear? In what way?
