Blown ear drum

[sdalcher]

Have been reading through many of the posts and thought I'd share an event that happened circa 1995.

Full cave class with my friend and dive buddy Jerry Nuss. Last dive of the class in the Devil's system. As we started the descent, Jerry led I followed. I experienced some difficulty in clearing my left ear at about 15 feet. Jerry was already disappearing into the cave. I wasn't going to let a sticky ear keep me from finishing the last dive. I forcefully performed a Valsalva and was rewarded with a rather loud squeal and clearing of the affected ear. Went on to complete the dive with no issues.

After surfacing felt like my left ear was waterlogged, applied some alcohol to try and dry it out. All evening the ear had the same feeling, but it wasn't painful just felt waterlogged. We drove home the next day and by the time we arrived late that evening I began to have the first bit of discomfort. By the next morning the pain was so intense, I could barely get out of bed. Managed to get a doctor appointment later that morning.

End result was a ruptured eardrum and a very nasty inner ear infection. Moral of the story is to listen to your body. There will always be another opportunity to dive. I wish that I had the maturity then to just realize that I needed to call that dive and try again later.

[knabuecave]

I had a similar thing happened when I was coming back from Olsen. I could barely get down 20 feet and my buddy was ahead of me and left me. He came back within a minute or two and then asked me what was going on. Thankfully I was able to get it to clear but I thought I would have to hike my doubles out!!! ��#♂️

[sdalcher]

The bad thing is that when it ruptured it really wasn't all that painful.... The next few days more than made up for it.