Aloha all,
I had a couple of surgeries done to my ears about a month ago getting rid of the ear drums and canals, and sealing them off externally from the ocean. It is a somewhat interesting, questionable and controversial procedure. I searched through the forums here did not turn up anything on this. Knowledge is power, and I thought that this board should have this information in here, and maybe I will find somebody else who might know more about this (or might have had this done) and what to expect as I have not been cleared to resume freediving yet. The surgery procedure has been formally called "Blind Closure of the External Auditory Canal".
I originally posted this at [ame="http://spearboard.com/showthread.php?t=82561"]spearboard[/ame] and here is a copy and paste of my original post.
I had a couple of surgeries done to my ears about a month ago getting rid of the ear drums and canals, and sealing them off externally from the ocean. It is a somewhat interesting, questionable and controversial procedure. I searched through the forums here did not turn up anything on this. Knowledge is power, and I thought that this board should have this information in here, and maybe I will find somebody else who might know more about this (or might have had this done) and what to expect as I have not been cleared to resume freediving yet. The surgery procedure has been formally called "Blind Closure of the External Auditory Canal".
I originally posted this at [ame="http://spearboard.com/showthread.php?t=82561"]spearboard[/ame] and here is a copy and paste of my original post.
Aloha all,
I can't dive for 4 more weeks and am bored so I thought I'd share what I had done several days ago.
I had what is commonly called "Surfers Ear" in both of my ear canals which is abnormal bone growth due to constant exposure to cold wind/water growing up surfing in norcal. The bone around the ear canal grows and presses against the canal, making it smaller. This results in poor hearing, and increased ear infections due to water not being able to drain normally out of the canal. This is formally known as exostosis.
Surfer's Ear - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Standard procedure is to chisel away at the bone to restore normal opening diameter to restore hearing and draining ability. The problem rarely comes back.
I decided that if a surgeon was gonna go and play in there, I wanted to at least have some dive-related improvements made at the same time. After asking around and doing some basic research, I decided I didn't want to have the exostosis removed, and to just have my middle ear filled with fat somehow instead.
However, insurance would not go for this, and neither would any ENT doctors because this would make me 100 percent deaf. I was born deaf, and have been about 95% deaf all of my life. I do not rely on my ears for anything other than to hold my glasses on.
After some searching and referrals, I finally found a surgeon who had a crack insurance team and was willing to do something along these lines. Basically they would have to formally do the exostosis surgery in order to get insurance to pay, otherwise it would be $7,400 out of my pocket per ear. On a public school teacher's salary, while living in Hawaii, that's not affordable at all. Plus there would be other fees involved (consultation, anesthesiologist fees, etc).
The doctor is based in Los Angeles and we formally started the process to have it done in my home town since this doctor comes to Hawaii twice a year to do operations/consultations. Perfect right? However, we ran into a big snag. My insurance provider would not pay for the doctor to do this procedure because he was not in the network with my health care provider. However, nobody in Hawaii who was in the network was willing to even consider tackling my surgery project/goals.
That's where his crack team came into play. They figured out that if I had the surgery done outside of Hawaii, my insurance provider then would be required to pay up. So $800 later for plane tickets and a hotel, I was in Los Angeles. :duh
The procedure decided upon was called "Blind Closure of the External Auditory Canal".
Basically they cut most of my ear lobe off so that they can directly access and work into the ear canal and middle ear through a direct and larger opening.
First they chiseled away the bones pressing into the ear canal to open that up. Then they ripped out the ear drum, scraped every bit of skin out of my ear canal except at the opening. At the opening, they carefully peeled the skin back and out of the opening in strips like one would do with a banana - just in reverse. They they stitched up all the loose skin to seal off the ear canal for good.
Nothing was filled into the ear canal or middle ear much to my disappointment - the surgeon felt it was too much of an infection risk and he felt he was pushing it doing both ears at once instead of waiting for the other to recover fully first. Nobody seems to know, but in theory I will not need to clear my ears again while diving, but if I do, it will be much less frequently than I used to. He also believes that I will not be able to damage anything by choosing not to clear my ears, and that with the painful part (ear drum) removed, I will be able to ignore any pressure sensations in there when I dive.
If I find that the air present in the ears present an problem or concern, I can always go back for another surgery where they will drill through my mastoid and inject fat from my stomach to get rid of the air space in there. However that's another 5 weeks out of the water and more money spent so I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.
The recovery process has been surprisingly difficult and miserable considering it was supposed to be an outpatient process. I ended up staying in the hospital for 30+ hours afterwards and had to be constantly doped up on strong painkillers for a week before I could even start playing with trying to last a few hours without painkiller support. Yesterday was the first day I've gone without any pain medication. I'm still going strong today. I am not able to open my mouth to eat normally yet.
I had a BBQ on Saturday with burgers and sausages, and I was not able to open my mouth wide enough to eat either of those items. :head Thankfully Daryl Wong and Diver Joe brought over some steak that I was able to cut into tiny pieces and eat.
If anybody knows more about this stuff and wants to share, I'm all "ears" or so to speak.
Any questions, just ask.
-Paul
