Hi penelope1,
"doctormike" is our resident expert on ear issues and diving, and hopefuly he'll respond soon.
In the meantime, I will point out that it's extremely unlikely you have water in the "inner ear." Most certainly the problem described resides in the "middle ear" space.
Hehehe... here I am! Great anatomy illustration, Doc... thanks for posting that one..
Sorry I won't be much more help than anyone else from afar, though...
In most such cases, the problem is the lingering results of barotrauma with fluid and/or blood in the middle ear. You probably know all the tricks to try to fix this yourself, if not, look at
this video.
Sudafed and other decongestants have a minor effect on middle ear barotrauma... oral steroids work for this as well, but they have side effects and aren't usually used in the acute setting. In rare cases, if the fluid persists, there is the option of draining it in the office, but then you would not be able to dive until the drainage site had fully healed.
Now this is all assuming that the problem is a middle ear one (barotrauma). It is unusual for the fluid to persist for so long, so before doing anything else, you might want to try to make sure that there isn't something else more serious going on. For example, it is possible to have an INNER ear problem (such as a leakage of inner ear fluids, or even inner ear DCI). This has the potential to be a permanent hearing loss, so I would recommend that you find a way to see a doctor, preferably an ENT doctor, who can look at your ear, test your hearing, and find out exactly what is going on.
One last possibility would be an external ear problem (trapped and impacted earwax with retained fluid). This is also something that could be managed by having an ear doc clean out your ears. Again, unlikely to have happened with a dive unless you were instrumenting your ears with a q-tip or something...
Good luck, feel free to keep us posted..!
Mike
