Since the accident my wife has had to drive me to work because of the vertigo. The hydrocodone definitely took the edge off the pain but mixed with the meclizine it knocked me into a ridiculous drowsy state. I was prescribed hydrocodone with acetaminophen for the pain, steroid and antibiotic eardrops to stave off any infection and meclizine (Bonine) for the vertigo. He still verified I didn't have the bends or an embolism but those were quickly ruled out. When you go to the ER and you say you had a scuba diving accident they see you fast! Luckily the ER doc was a diver and knew exactly what I had. The pain continued and the vertigo got worse so the wife drove me to the ER. If the pain still persisted they recommended I go to the ER. Talked with the people at DAN and they recommended I take a sudafed and an advil. I did some research on the web and on the DAN site and figured I had a middle ear barotrauma. If I sneezed, hiccuped or burped it felt like someone was stabbing me in the ear.Īfter a couple of hours the pain increased and I started to get pretty bad vertigo. Going up and down hills caused pain in my ear as I couldn't get any of the pressure out. We cancelled the second dive and ran for the ramp.Īt the ramp my hearing was getting worse as was the pressure in my ear. We were doing a 45 minute surface interval but he started to get seasick and it started to feel like my ear was filling up with water and I was having a hard time opening my eustachian tube to clear the pressure. The rest of the dive went fine and the ascent worked out even with his lighter tank. I had a little pain then but it went away quickly so I thought nothing of it. When we got near the bottom (50ft) I got a pretty good squeeze on my right ear and equalized a little too hard. Second, with me helping him get down and paying attention to making sure he was good I wasn't as vigilant about equalizing or my own safety. He was using an AL80 and it was going to get more buoyant as the dive wore on. This was an error in judgement as we should have found a way to get him heavier.

I'm always a bit heavy on scuba so I surfaced and held onto him to help get him just past the surface so he could descend. I could tell he was struggling to get down and was underweighted. On the dive I jumped in and was halfway down on the anchor line. We got all the gear set up and thought we had enough lead. He hadn't dove in about 1.5 years and had to rent everything but his fins and mask.

While this happened scuba diving it is a good reminder to everyone.Ībout 2 weeks ago I took a co-worker on a refresher dive out to La Jolla before his trip to Hawaii.

Barotrauma forum