Should I dive again?

[Danyarl]

Firstly, hello to everyone!

I thought this would be the best place to gain some advice about a dilemma I'm facing. I'm currently travelling up Australia's east coast and would love to go diving when I reach Cairns. However, I've been diving once before and it was not the most pleasant experience. It must have been about 8 or 9 years ago, when I was around the age of 10, but my family and I were on holiday in Turkey and bought an excursion to go scuba diving for the day. When we went out they went through some instructions, including some information on how to relieve the pressure on your ears when descending (equalizing your ears?). I, being young and struggling to understand their fairly poor English, failed to realize that you needed to equalize as you went down, and held my nose and blew before going down (silly, I know!). I distinctly remember them saying that this was very important. When they took us down for the first time, I remember feeling an immense pressure on my ears, which grew to the point of quite severe pain. I was too scared to tell other divers so stayed down whilst my ears made odd squeaking noises that I imagine was indicative of damage.

When we resurfaced I couldn't hear as well. My ears had the blocked feeling you feel when you're congested with a cold. I was told by my brother that I needed to equalize underwater, and we assumed my hearing would return eventually so went in again. This time I equalized correctly and there were no problems, until we returned home and later that night I experienced what felt like an extreme migraine - my head felt as if it was in a vice, I was numb in parts of my body, nauseous and delirious (hallucinating and failing to understand my parents). It lasted for an hour or so until I got to sleep. I've had migraines before so my parents didn't think too much of it, but after my mother read up on decompression sickness and thought it may be related to this.

No problems followed, but to this day my hearing has never been what it was before I went diving, and I've never established whether it was decompression sickness or just coincidental. I'm now seriously considering not going diving again in case I cause further damage to my hearing or experience a repeat of the sickness (I've read threads about doctors forbidding people from diving again due to it). Can anybody shed some light on what happened all those years ago and whether or not it's safe to dive again?

Thanks!
Daniel

 

[Doomnova]

First things first have you had formal scuba training because a fair bit of this is covered in a basic open water course? From the sounds of it no. Then the first thing I would do before anything else is gt your open water cert.But i would also get your ears checked out just in case there is any lingering damage to the ear drum which I'll go into in the next paragraph. Doubt there is anything that would be wrong with the membrane now but just to be safe.

For the first paragraph yes its equalizing your ears.
Well I doubt its decompression sickness what you had was ear barotrauma that results from the increased pressure outside your ear from the water as you increase in depth. So the general rule of pressure gradients is when something of lower pressure goes into something of higher pressure that which is of the higher pressure wanted to equalize the lower pressure. Hence in this case your ears. Your ears area semi closed vessel with a tube call the eustation tube leading from your espogaus to you ears. You can usually hear this open and close like a click when you swallow. The other part is the ear drum or tympanic membrane. The membrane doesn't allow air or water to pass through normally unless it bursts. This is the part that is facing the water and the pressure outside of it wants to equalize the lower pressure inside of it which leads to your middle ear which is responsible for hearing. So how do you get around this pressure diffrence easily. You pinch your nose and blow gently through it and this process forces air up you eustation tubes into your middle ear. the pain you were feeling was due to he pressure trying to get into your ears and the pain nerves picking up on it. As to blowing before you go down some people do that on the surface but the big key is all the way down. You can always call a dive if your not comfortable. Its not a matter of bravado or anything its your safety.

Second paragraph yea that is text book bartrauma. Had it myself a few times but going down after the first dive and your ears are in that bad shape your lucky the membrane didn't burst right then and there. Which could have been really really bad as water could get in and give you a very nasty case of vertigo to the point you wouldn't know which way was up and as you know from your experience hearing loss comes with it. The full felling was mucous and blood in your ears due to he damage done by the pressure differential and can take a week or two to clear. The migraine was from the damage done to your ears due ot the pressure and odds are the nerves being in a very excited start sending odd signals to your brain all the time. Would be my guess but I'm not ear nose and throat specialist so don't take it for gospel.

Now on to DCS(Decompression sickness). DCS is the result of bubbles forming the blood stream and capillary's and getting lodge into places they should be caused from returning to the surface too quickly. They can very greatly in severity from a minor rash like "skin bend" to well death as it can get up into your brain. Usually you'll get pain in your joints or back where there are places for the bubbles to get lodged. Also you can nausea tiredness. poor ability to breath. All in all from what you said after the dive I would keep up with the barotrauma more than DCS "doctor mom" usually picks the worst things of the worst. But also I cannot rule out some DCS due to not knowing the dive profile ect. Also the migraine can be caused by dehydration as well since when breathing air from a scuba tank it is very dry and if your nto well hydrated you can get a headache like that.

As for doctors forbbiding people to dive from a DCS hit yea it happens. The damage to your hearing could have easily been prevented by one thing an open water scuba course. As for it being coincidence no very unlikely. It was simple lack of training and not calling the dive when you could not equalize your ears.

Honestly I have to kinda be blunt to your family for taking you down without proper training and to the dive operator for letting you go down without proper training. Pretty much this whole thing could have been solved with a 2 week hell a week long course. That is the brunt of it.

 

[Islandheart]

Don't Dive !

Get a Ear Specialist to check out your ears.... Sorry but it does not, sound good or look good based on your description of events.

But don't dive again til you've seen a real doctor...

DCS.... Not likely.

2nd .... Many people don't realize how bad those quickie resort courses can be....

Hate it that this happened to you.

 

[261311]

Apart from everyone recommending you see a doctor, if there are no further medical issues and they are comfortable with you trying diving again, follow your heart. If you do choose to try out diving again, be sure that you're not forcing yourself to do anything your uncomfortable with. If something feels wrong, there's a good chance there may be. Don't descend any further than you're comfortable with, equalize regularly (have the person running your discovery go over this with you so that you can understand and practice this before you get in water and also in shallow water so you know how it feels under water).

As far as DCS goes, you typically experience joint pain and no discover scuba course would risk putting you so close to the non-decompression-limits you'd need to endanger that, no need to worry there. It sounds like you do have some sort of ear damage, again- see a doc. All in all it sounded like you had a horrible first time experience but hopefully you're able to still enjoy scuba on a limited basis because it truly is a fun sport and when you have proper training, commit to it and use your head there are fairly low risks to injury. To say there are none would be us lying to you but they can be largely prevented by sticking with others of more experience and again, a basic amount of training (at minimum).

 

[jIM STEELE]

call dan ( divers alert network ) and learn to dive

---------- Post added February 18th, 2013 at 11:24 PM ----------

controlling a nice slow decent is key and the fenzel and valsalvo is important

 

[g1138]

I'm not giving a doctor's opinion here, but just info from my classes in anatomy, biology, and diving physiology.
Since you did not equalize at all to depth, several things happened.

First lets go over a few things. You SHOULD see a doctor who specializes in ears. They're called an ENT doctor, Ears-Nose-Throat.
Some terms:
Eustachian tubes - Tubes that go from the back of your throat to your ears. They are the tubes that allow you to pop your ears when you ascend a mountain, fly in a plane, and when you dive down

Your ear is composed of 3 parts
Outer, Middle, and Inner.
Outer is your ear canal and ear drum
Middle is your ear drum and opening of the Eustachian Tube
Inner is where your bone is that responsible for hearing, as well as the structure responsible for your balance.

When you went down to depth without clearing your ears, your Eustachian tubes squeezed shut, making equalizing impossible unless you ascend. When the tubes are squeeze so tight, they can stay that way for a while, even if you go all the way to the surface. This is why in Basic scuba training the phrase is: Clear your ears early in often.

Second thing happened at depth. The water pressure pressed into your ear drum. Equalizing your ear puts air behind the ear drum (inside your head; really your middle ear). The object of equalizing your ears is to put enough air pressure to counteract the pressure of water pushing against your ear drum.
The deeper you are, the more pressure on your ear drum; which means you have to clear more often as you dive down deeper.

Since you did not equalize, your ear was caused trauma by the water pressure. Your ear drum, middle, and inner ear will swell because of this. And sometimes your body will produce fluids to fill these areas to prevent harm when you're back on land; that can lead to more problems such as an inner ear infection.

My guess is the swelling created some permanent damage to the hearing bone in your inner ear.
This is a barotrauma (trauma by pressure) injury, not a decompression illness.

It may or may not be safe to dive again, you should get a ENT doctor's opinion.
And before you dive again, it would be wise to take a full Basic Open Water diving course so things can be explained in full. There's much more to it than swimming, breathing, and clearing your ears.

 

[chillyinCanada]

As the others have said get a doctor's clearance first, which may be a requirement in Australia anyway. You also understand that it is necessary to equalize continuously as you descend. Don't forget that it is a bad idea to equalize too hard, and if you feel discomfort or pain as you descend - STOP, go back up a couple of feet until the pressure abates. Try again. Of course, if you are still not able to equalize after a couple of tries, you'll have to end the dive.

When you first hurt your ears, you are quite lucky not to have also developed a bad infection.

Best of luck.

 

[Quero]

You're in Australia which has specific mandated regulations about medical clearances for scuba diving training. Therefore there are lots and lots of dive-savvy doctors around who can check you out and reassure you about your ears. Here's a useful website:
Dive Medicine Clinics Certified Under Australian Standard AS4005.1

Next, it's unlikely in the extreme that you suffered decompression sickness. That is a condition that results from staying too deep too long. The kind of diving experience you had was a "try diving" class, and those are typically kept to very shallow depths and short dive times. It's most likely that you experienced barotrauma, and perhaps you ruptured your tympanic membrane--pain relief is often markedly quick once the rupture occurs. Hearing loss is generally temporary (a few weeks), so if your hearing has never returned to its previous acuity, perhaps your injury produced some scarring or something.

Regardless, you're asking for medical advice on the internet where most of us are not doctors and where those who are doctors cannot actually examine you. If you'd like to try diving again, go to that list I've given you, find a doc, and get your ears checked out!

 

[vladimir]

If you're Googling some of the advice here it might be helpful to know that "fenzel" is actually Frenzel, and "valsalvo" is actually valsalva.

Here is a good resource for questions about diving-related ear issues:
Doc's Diving Medicine Home Page
(Scroll down a little and click on the video entitled "The Diver's Ear—Under Pressure".)

Doctormike, a ScubaBoard member, is an ENT. You might want to PM him, or post your question in the medical forum, where it will get the attention of several dive-savvy physicians.

I am sorry you had such a terrible experience during your Discover Diving foray. My first wife's Discover Diving experience was also a disaster—though without the physical trauma—and it was years before she attempted it again. With proper training, however, she learned to dive safely and she enjoyed it a lot.

 

[DivemasterDennis]

While there are many places that competently offer what PADI calls a Discover Scuba Diving experience, which others may call a resort course, unfortunately there are many people who have experiences just like Danyarl. I am not a fan of the "resort course" generally, but those places that take time to properly orient the customers to gear use, safety measures ( including equalizing) and a few basic skills can offer a fun and safe experience. It is far better to receive the infinitely more extensive training and theory learned in a basic scuba certification class. If Danyarl decides to dive again, I think his next dive should be in a swimming pool as part of a certification class, following a medical evaluation and clearance. I would encourage him to try diving again, the right way.
DivemasterDennis