Scuba+Pain+Panic

You know when you get hurt there is going to be some smirking medical professional who says "on a scale of one to ten how bad does it hurt?" Just know we already judged by your injury and your face how bad it hurts. And yes we deduct points for rudeness and for being on your phone. You do not play Merge Dragons (please friend me and send gifts) and claim your pain is a 9.75. Just stop it. But this day I hit a level of pain that caused me to #panic.

My hubby and I love to scuba dive. (It works really well for him because the idea is to sink rather than float. Read rescuing the rescuers) Anyways, we had decided to go to a scuba resort where you basically eat, sleep and dive. Anthony's Key Resort in Honduras. (I'm not getting paid to name drop them...yet) It was amazing. I tried to live there but they said no. (Doug and the kids are "they"). Party Poopers. We were having the best time diving and decided this would be the perfect time to get our next level dive certs. So off we go. We have all our dives scheduled including a night dive. I've never done a night dive at all and certainly not one in open ocean. You know, like with the wildlife. I was very nervous and excited. But first we had to do the other dives. I honestly can't tell you what the other dives even were. EXCEPT this one.

We had to do a deep dive. Probably to demonstrate that we are capable of doing a safety stop. Some safety rules like safety glasses on medics 24 hours a day are just stupid and wasteful. Other safety rules like safety stops are super legit! So here we are at 105 feet under water. I had been having some trouble getting down because my ears wouldn't clear. But I felt like I was getting left and had to keep up. So I just pushed through and kept trying to clear my ears with no success. Were 105 feet deep and we are standing with our feet on the ocean floor. The instructor does some sign language that is not ASL approved that means he wants us to kneel down. (I think that's what it means) He is going to draw in the dirt. Communication is somewhat limited down there. But I cannot kneel. I cannot bend down. It's like my ears, especially my left one, has reached max depth. When I try to kneel the extra couple inches of depth causes stabbing pain in my ear. This stabbing is a 10. A real 10. Not a 10 while you play on your phone and order grub hub. This made my eyes water. I don't remember labor being this bad. The stabs felt like a knife going through my ear into my brain. I stand up straight. The ache remains but the stabbing eases up. I'm trying to remain mentally in control of myself. I start talking to me in my head. "Erin, take a deep breath. You. Are. Fine. Breathe. Don't panic. You can do this." The instructor grabs my hand a tugs me down. STAB. I jerk away. Jerking caused me to instinctively inhale through my nose. Which means I got enough water in my nose and throat that I needed to violently cough. But because my inhale was cut off by my mask I didn't have the air to cough. Also my ear was stabbing and gurgling and I just knew it was bleeding.

I embarrassed to tell you, this is where I panicked. I just totally lost my ability to use rational thought. The only thing in my head was "pain, air, go up!" So I started just going up. The extra instructor grabbed me by BC and indicated I needed to calm down and breathe. Its hard to explain through type but he indicated he was breathing with me. I knew I wasn't going up. I could breathe or I could die. So okay, lets breathe. My brain has now switched gears "You panicked. People who panic DIE! And they kill other people too! You are no better than all those people you have sedated for not controlling their panic. You could have ended up sedated in a Honduran ER. That's a terrible choice! Moron!" Except it didn't completely seems like a terrible choice considering I was enduring the worst pain of my life in my left ear. Somehow we got through that dive. I think I cried through the whole thing. As soon as I was given permission to go up I was going. I did my required safety stop cause I didn't want to add actual death to my ear drama. And finally we surfaced. My ear was going to be totally better! Except it wasn't better. At all.

We climbed on the boat and they all looked at me."What happened down there? Did the depth scare you?"

"No! My ear! Its so bad I can't stand it!" I look at Doug who is also a medic and better take my next statement seriously. "It's a 10. A real 10! Help me!" Doug looks alarmed but what can he really do? I mean we are in a boat. In the ocean. And Doug is an expert at life threatening emergencies. Even a real ear ache that is a 10 on the pain scale is not life threatening. (Not that anyone needed to say that to me at the time). We head back to shore and every bump of the boat is a knife through my ear. The wind dries the tears on my face before they are even noticed by anyone.

Once we get to shore we are directed to a doctor. "She deals with diving accident's all the time. She's the best."It's not like I have many options on an island off the coast of a third world country. Might as well give it a try. We go to the clinic and sign in. We are the only one's there but we waited a long time. Looking back I think they probably had to go get the doctor. (Also we do not actually know if she is a doctor. She could be the village witch doctor for all we know.) We get in the room and discover they forgot to tell us something about the nice doctor. She doesn't speak any English. GREAT!! But she does understand the universal face that says "I am in pain" She does know we are divers and she sees me pointing at my ear. What more was there to say? She looks in my ear and says "Oooooooh noooooo." Her face is one of sympathy. She checks my other ear. Brand spanking new thought enters my brain. "THERE IS A WILDLIFE IN MY EAR!" She calmly gets out her picture chart and points to my left ear and points to the picture labeled "Grade 4 barotrauma" She points to my right ear and to the picture labeled grade 2 or 3. No wildlife. What a relief! So I say the only thing I can think of. "So I can dive right?" She replies in disbelief "Oh no!" You know she is thinking "how stupid is this girl?"

She writes me a couple prescriptions, orders me to keep my ear out of the water and sends me away.

I will have y'all know I stayed out of the water 2 days. I missed 6 dives. But I was not missing that night dive! I made it. We stayed at 30 feet. (minimum allowed depth for a training dive) and we cut it short. But it was awesome! If you ever get the chance to night dive do it! also if you stay on the boat with the captain while the others dive he shares his snacks with you!

I won't post it here but google image "barotrauma to the ear" and scroll till you see the chart with 6 pictures. It was days before the pain went away and weeks before I could hear normally again. And I am going back first chance I get!!!

*** this was my fault and not the dive masters or resort. I knew better than to go deeper with ear problems***