broken eardrums during records

[tylerz]

For those who claim that they have had sudden unannounced perforations, I do not agree that this is an excuse to tolerate them. As my previous post points to, there are ways to completely avoid that. As far as hood squeeze, that has long ago been easily addressed and is totally avoidable. I agree that there are cases where people do not feel the pain most do experience with a perforation, but most occurences as such are due to previous scarring from perforations or trauma to the eardrum. It emphasizes the point actually that others are making when you claim you do not feel it and that it does not cause significant discomfort before or after; it says you can ignore your limits or the need to progress in consideration of adapting to the specific needs of your body. Therefore from these type of people we will eventually see a smaller percentage who take advantage of that to be on top.

It sounds very odd that those with easily perforated eardrums are telling others to not speak because these others don't know how easy it is for the ear bursters to find themselves in a damaging situation. That is the equivalent of someone who has a heart condition complaining because others don't have one, and then further insisting that nobody employ conditions in a sport that impede their taking part if they don't take actions to change the reactive tendency of their heart under stressful conditions. I don't understand the argument?

Yes, I believe people are in denial if you insist on not learning from your accidents. As an example a fellow locally has the same condition of easily perforated eardrums. One such case occured on an outing last year. He was extremely distraught by the event. He had no time according to his accounts to do anything about it. Afterwards I attempted to share information about the physiology behind the trauma and how he could take steps to greatly decrease the chance. He barely heard me and has yet to even try what I suggested. Instead he gave up diving for a short period of time and now is back at it as before... until the next one.

Oh, and I suppose I had better go for my regular medical... especially since it has been over 5 years since my last one.

 

[samdive]

I just think that those of you who have not had eardrum trouble do not really understand how it happens - it seems that you have this vision of us hammering our eardrums and just forcing the last equalisation to get a few meters deeper. It is not like that at all. I have never had to turn or call a max depth because of my ears - they clear just fine all the way down. Its just that a few times, more than two years ago now, they have popped on the way down, or on the way back up - not at the bottom and never out of knowingly forcing an equalisation. I don't believe that it is even possible to deliberately break an eardrum to get an extra bit of depth - for me its just something that has happened occasionally without any warning or being able to do anything about it. Maybe that is hard to understand if it has not happened to you. And the other myth is that it hurts - it doesn't. Not at all. Until maybe if it gets infected or swollen afterwards...... but not at the time it is about to happen. At least not in my head.

I am also not convinced it is any more dangerous than a lot of other things we risk as freedivers - flooding sinuses opens them to infection in exactly the same way a damaged eardrum does for example yet no one has talked about banning that. Diving on exhale squashes your lungs and quite possibly causes barotrauma we can't necessarily see yet no one is debating that, in fact quite the opposite, is a current trend!

Freediving is never going to be entirely safe - we need to make it as safe as we can - but the rules we use to do that need to be both workable and fair. Disqualifying people because of a pin hole in their ear that they had no way of preventing is neither of those - enough from me on this!

S

 

[Absolute]

people seem to obsess about what's fair and what's unfair.

hummm I wonder who this might be?

 

[pat fish]

First things first: congratulations to Herbert for
a) impressives dives and new NL Record and
b) your smart invention

My opinion on perforated eardrums. As long as wet equalisation with flooding of the middle ear is allowed I don't see any difference to a perforated eardrum. Besides of that I just lately experienced several reverse blocks in the last two training weeks in Dahab. It can happen to anyone. Wasn't a big deal on the warm up dives. I just slowed down and opened the tubes by mouth/yawn and reverse equalisation. But still a psychological stress factor for deep CW dives... I was glad the ear problems went away in my second diving week.
Please also consider that there is huge physiological differences among the population. Me for example I have never had any broken eardrums -but several heavy middle ear infections accompanied with partial loss of hearing. Scary. I didn't have any pain then. So a rupture of an eardrum might happen without any feeling of pain. For competitions I wouldn't have any problems with a DQ because of an obviously ruptured eardrum. The dive would only "count" half for me as a performance anyway. On the other hand I am not a friend of big medical tests and stuff after each competition dive...

yours
Pat

 

[AltSaint]

For those who claim that they have had sudden unannounced perforations, I do not agree that this is an excuse to tolerate them.

Tyler

I made a statement about an eardrum perforation that happened to me. I did not do this

a) As you are suggesting that it was false to begin with, or
b) because I was trying to tell others that it was an excuse to tolerate them.

It was simply a true statement about what happened to me. The reason for posting was to highlight that everything is not always cut and dried when it comes to the circumstances surrounding how this happens.

As for avoiding hood squeeze, why exactly do you think someone would do that? Possibly because it had happened to them before and they wanted to avoid it in future? What I am saying here, is that you don't buy a suit and expect to have a hood squeeze, especially if you have never had one before. So don't assume that every single person has 'easily addressed' that issue, until after they have encountered it, by which time the damage could be done.

 

[samdive]

yup we all lied and said it happened to us without warning - in fact we are such hardcore pain junkies we deliberately break our eardrums every time we dive just so we can say we are deeper than that sensible person next to us. When I bought my suit I requested one with extra squeeeeeeeeeeeeeze I love the pain so much!

DONNA!!! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING ONLINE - GO AND GET MARRIED GIRL!!!!

 

[Fondueset]

This is an interesting and relevant topic So let me chime in. I just got over a mild middle ear infection accompanied by alot of fluid. I dove a couple of days ago, and the next day experienced, to a lesser degree, the same symptoms - pressure and ringing in the ear as though it were filled with fluid again. I've never ruptured an eardrum and have had only one other ear infection in my life - outer ear. Equalizing seems to be quite easy for me - just a slight shift of the jaw - not even that. Right now for example I can just open my eustacean tubes with sort of a pre-yawn. All this talk of not feeling the drum rupture has me a little freaked as I've allways used a mild sense of pressure as a signal to equalize. All comments and advice welcome! (this may sound stupid - but if theres no pain how do you know you blew a drum?)

PS - I'm not diving particularly deep - maybe 10 - 12 meters.

 

[samdive]

you know you've blown a drum if you can blow air through your ears - an interesting party trick!

if its a bad one, you will also feel water rush in which makes you dizzy

and if you sleep on that side you might see some interesting "art" on your pillow in the morning!

 

[Fondueset]

Thanks

How's the new wetsuit?

 

[samdive]

ooooh it is lovely thanks! AND it took me deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep in Dahab!! absolutely no hood squeeze at all, I will have to find another way to get my pain kicks!

 

[Fondueset]

I know what you mean (not Dahab as I don't normally go places) - I used to use Yoga for pain but now life has become sufficient :king

I plan to whip out my Elios 5mm pretty soon - my 3mil plush lined suit is starting to let the chill in.

 

[Monkey Matt]

Hey, this thread is getting interesting. We seem to be split between those with good ears and those with bad ears!
There has been a lot of interesting proposals that would be great in an ideal world. For those who are unaware, we do not live in an ideal world. We live in a world where a lot of Freedivers object to paying more than $100 to enter competitions. So how are we going to pay for two Doctors for each event, one of which should be an ENT specialist.
I have worked with the organisers of several events and the Doctor is always an issue. These guys are professionals and want paying for their time or just do the event for fun but will often let you down at the last minute. This is not a critisism of those that have given their time freely, it is just the way it gas turned out 3 times out of 5 for me.
Some also seem to suggest that if you ever rupture an ear drum you should give up Freediving. I'm sure Herbert will take that advice on board and try another sport, NOT!!!!
While I'm ranting..... No Eric Fattah I do not believe that we should aloow black outs, I never said that and I will never believe in it. :vangry
I'm glad to get that lot off my chest and if I offended any one, no offence was intended.

 

[immerlustig]

the one thing i find interesting, as i never heard of it before, is that some people don't feel the pressure buildup before their eardums pop. how is that possible? or does the eardrum pop before the pressure feeling gets painful?

oh, and what i don't understand is if herberts dive as dq'd because of that.

and regarding the issue of injuries and disqualifications i personally have the impression that a lung squeeze or bo are being considered part of freediving training for many people. if a bo is reason for a dq people train to avoid it and turn a meter earlier maybe, same should go for lung squeeze. how to effectively judge that is a different story. it seems that objections to rules that dq a diver for an injury are based on the problem of judging it. i see this issue more in a sense of general safety consciousness rather than a way to limit competitors. (monkey matt, i'm sure you don't mean to take the health and safety of competitors lightly simply because a doctor needs to get paid)

regards,

roland

ps: i am deeply impressed that a simple kitchen funnel plus a kids ballon and a shoelace are given such a funky abbreviation. respect

 

[Monkey Matt]

Roland,
I think you mis understood my point with regard to extra Doctors or anything else that would add costs to staging an event.
I was trying to make the point that on this forum we can make hundreds of great suggestions to improve our sport and the safety of it but they all add costs that have to be covered.
Back to the subject of this thread, perforated ear drum equals DQ or not. Well it seems to be split between those with good ears or those with bad ears.
Matt

 

[efattah]

I recently had a case of DCS from recreational freediving and spent 5 hours in the recompression chamber.

I could have taken the attitude of people here, and I could have said that DCS is a 'part of life' in recreational freediving and just keep doing it over and over.

Not so.

Since the incident I resolved to permanently switch to FRC dives, and I have done so, in order to dramatically reduce my risk of DCS.

When I got bent I was following existing freediving tables. But I still got bent. Then, rather than say that getting bent is a part of life, deal with it, instead I tried to modify my behaviour to avoid the problem.

On FRC dives my bottom times and depths are somewhat reduced for the moment. But that is MY problem.

Likewise if you have repeated problems with broken eardrums, you can take proaction to avoid it. Maybe that means no diving or diving shallow, or using no hood to avoid suit squeeze, or avoiding diving when the sinuses aren't clear. The action necessary to avoid problems isn't always pleasant.

Similarly, people who repeatedly experience severe lung squeeze can take proaction to avoid the problem, by diving shallower, going down more slowly, waiting for a greater blood shift, hydrating more, switching to less forceful equalizing techniques.... but instead, people I have seen simply say that squeeze is a part of life and just keep doing the same thing over an' over again.

 

[tylerz]

Tyler
I made a statement about an eardrum perforation that happened to me. I did not do this
a) As you are suggesting that it was false to begin with, or
b) because I was trying to tell others that it was an excuse to tolerate them.

Speaking of misunderstandings, I never suggested it was false. I tried to emphasize in that post that I have first hand experience with acquaintances that have undergone the same thing. Second I did not say that you were trying to tell others that it was an excuse to tolerate them, but implicitly you are encouraging toleration if you are not working actively to solve the problem. Telling everybody it just happens and there is nothing to do about it, encourages that others should be complacent to the problem. Why would they work on something that those with first-hand experience state is unavoidable?

So don't assume that every single person has 'easily addressed' that issue, until after they have encountered it, by which time the damage could be done.

Speaking of assumptions, your response assumes I was only referring to you. I wasn't. I never said more than one person, let alone 'every' person, has easily addressed anything, I said 'hood squeeze' was long ago easily addressed. Meaning that the solution to hood squeeze is simple and publicly available. You have no reason to have a repeat circumstance if you look into the problem. What is the relevance of inexperience leading to a burst eardrum? It appears you don't currently have an understanding of how to avoid hood squeeze, which emphasizes my point of complacency. You say your ears easily burst yet you don't even look into a known situation that may well cause it again.

Nobody is strongly arguing against your claim of perforations being easy, heck I can take a beginner and tell them to swim as fast as they can to the bottom of the pool. If they swim fast enough they may very well burst their ear even with normal painful ear drums. Do you think if I tell them, they were inexperienced with their ears and it is easy to burst an eardrum, they are going to be any less angry with me? What is strongly being argued is what you are focusing your argument upon and what that implies. So, I would recommend to slow down on focusing on what you 'imagine' are the assumptions others are making, and focus more on the intended meaning.

Unless I am way off and misunderstood you... ?

 

[tylerz]

yup we all lied and said it happened to us without warning - in fact we are such hardcore pain junkies we deliberately break our eardrums every time we dive just so we can say we are deeper than that sensible person next to us. When I bought my suit I requested one with extra squeeeeeeeeeeeeeze I love the pain so much!

WOOOooaaaa, where did that come from? Riding off of AltSaint's post of misunderstanding?

 

[tylerz]

So how are we going to pay for two Doctors for each event, one of which should be an ENT specialist.

Why would it need two doctors? Heck buy one of those little ear magnifying glasses with the light, some alcohol, read some literature on safety practices, train judges, have competitors sign a waiver, and off to the races? Is there something that would make this illegal or a huge liability? Doesn't seem impractical otherwise. Then if somebody argues after being told there is a perforation, they must present a doctor's take within a given period of time.

 

[Fondueset]

Another simple question - how does suit squeeze work - and how can you prevent it?

I think I understand it but want to make sure I've got the picture.

 

[tylerz]

Regarding hood squeeze explained and solutions.

http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?p=207564&highlight=hood+squeeze#post207564

http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?p=450871&highlight=hood+squeeze#post450871

http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?p=207577&highlight=hood+squeeze#post207577