Invented
By
God (or FSM)
IMO
According to my ear doctor, I'm possibly swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool when it comes to eardrum durability and I've had the pleasure of perforating my left eardrum twice.
I don't know what happened the first time but I was on a descent, I may have been going to fast here and trying to hard to equalize, but wham!!! instant vertigo and i found myself wondering whether I could actually puke into a regulator. Yes, I know you can..now. Once the for had cleared and I'd figured out which way was up I continued with the dive not thinking anything had "gone wrong" , this was in warm water and the vertigo only lasted about a minute or so, but when I returned to the boat, i realised that I not only had a serious problem, but I could also perform cool party tricks with cigarette smoke.
And so ended the diving portion of my holiday.
The nest year i returned to the same location to do my Divemaster ( Utila Honduras ) and about a month into the program, with me being ultra paranoid about my eardrums I noticed a funny feeling in my left ear, yet it wasn't perforated. I paid a visit to the doctor that day and he had a look and told me what's "probably" happened is I've developed a few micro perforations in my eardrum which have allowed seawater to enter my middle ear causing an infection which was trying to pop out my eardrum from behind.
Luckily, I'd had the foresight to bring a course of Cipro with me as the only antibiotic available on the island at the time was Amoxicillin, which is rather wimpy.
Enter this Dutch guy, who was down on the island fun diving, and his funny looking mask. I'm stuck on the beach, actually doing that bit in the Divemaster program where you go to every dive shop and ask them about their boats, radio frequencies, Oxygen, first aid, rather than just copying "the last guy's" paper and dutch guy offers to sell me the mask, which he's bought specifically because he perforates his eardrum every time he dives, after he's finished with it.
So some thumb twiddling, beer consumption and several novels later, I bought the mask and was able to complete my Divemaster as planned. Yea, it was kind of gross diving with a perforated eardrum, what, with all that mysterious orange goo welling up from my middle ear when I surfaced but I managed to deal with that discreetly and I was using Vaseline around the ear pieces to ensure a watertight seal. IIRC, it only flooded out once.
So now I won't go on a dive trip without it. Sure I can dive locally ( brrrr cold ) with a regular mask and a hood but I don't do more than two dives in a day and I certainly don't dive daily for weeks.
This mask has allowed me to plan dive trips rather than trips with diving in them and I've shilled for this product ( IRL, this is the first time I've done it online ) to anybody that's ever complained about having ear problems. I've even suggested that dive schools keep a few of these "under the counter" in case a student is unable to complete their training due to ear problems and is looking for a refund.
