Barotrauma is physical damage to body tissues caused by a difference in pressure between a gas space inside, or in contact with the body, and the surrounding fluid.
In early fall (it was my dive number one hundret and something) I went diving with a couple of friends in a lake nearby.
The lake is one of my favourite lakes, not underwater, but it looks so nice on the top – I always was attracted by it’s look.
Anyways, this time, we were going to dive there – like many times before.Altogether we were 4 ppl. Me, an instructor and 2 buddies of mine that did the same course earlier.
We had two very nice dives – there are two wracks on the bottom of the lake which we visited, which was very nice to. Visability was OK, it was just a fun diving-day.
After the two days (and a short break) we decided to do another, third dive.
I asked my buddies if we could do a buddy change. After diving with a girl-buddy for 2 dives, I wanted to do the third dive with my boy-buddy.
Of course, this was fine with everybody. We decided that my instructor + girl buddy were to dive in front, whereas my boy-buddy and me should just follow them.
As we started our dive, I felt pressure in my right ear. But as I never ever had any serious problems with my ears or my ear clearing I just went on, slowed down, though. (Mistake #1, what about going back up?)
A few meters deeper I decided I couldn’t go any further as my ear was really aching now.
Now I guess my buddy made a mistake, too. He wasn’t close to me. In fact, he was about a meter deeper than I was, too far away to reach out to him.
As I wanted to go back up, I felt like I had to reach out to my buddy to tell him (mistake #2, what about waiting for my buddy to check on me?) – but as I couldn’t reach him from where I was, I clenched my teeth and went down to him (Mistake #3, what about using my torch, or even changing my position and using my fin to make him aware of me would have been enough…)
The very moment I reached out to him and showed him the signal for my problem: boooooom!
I just used my one hand to hold onto him, and my other hand to circle in front of my eyes – which was supposed to mean “I’m dizzy” – then I hold onto him.
Right at that moment I was very glad we had both done this weird diving course: how many times had we practised how to safe your buddy: how to get a buddy back up to the surface without him/her helping. ‘Cause that’s exactly what my buddy did.
Back up to the surface I felt like everything was OK, I wasn’t dizzy anymore, I could hear, everything was fine. But luckily my buddy took the lead and made me get out of the water. Soon I started shaking. Usually, my boy-buddy isn’t the care-taking person, but back at that moment, he really took good care of me. I know, with a different buddy this might not have happened, but to sum it up: it was me, who made 3 big mistakes and I am just happy how he dealt with the whole situation.
When our 2 buddies got back from there dive, we didn’t tell them the whole truth for neither of us realised the whole situation.
On the way back in the car I felt like it was getting harder for me to understand what people said, I had a very hard time listening. Besides, a weird-colored fluid was coming out of my ear. It was a reddish ocher.
my tympanic membrane (green) had 2 big claft
The next day I went to see an ear-doctor who told me my eardrum was injured. There were two big cleft.
The cold water that got through that cleft into my tympanic (the red area in the picture) which was not only the cause for my dizzyness and total leck of orientation, but also caused an acute ear.
Of course, my hearing wasn’t that good anymore, and I had to go through hundrets of listening-tests.
At that time of water-abstinence I started to really get into diving theory and learnt very much about my body and myself.
The hard thing was, that even though everybody knew about me not beeing able to even go swimming (i had to keep my ear totally dry) – i got some messages almost every weekend asking wheiter I wanted to go diving.
When my hearing-ability was back to normal, (and that took about 3 months) – the doctor finally gave me the OK to get my ears wet again. Means: I was allowed to shower, or to go swimming. But no diving at all, no headers, just plain swimming, head above the water.
This was like heaven to me. I’ve been missing water sooooo much! And yet it was aweful. I just wanted to put my head underwater….
But that took another month. Around christmas, the doctor gave me the OK to do 3 very safe dives, meaning: in the local swimming pool, at 3 meters depth, with a buddy, under total control, with very slow de- and ascending. I was the happiest girl ever! The 3 dives were all fine, I could try my fins, work on my buoyancy, i enjoyed it very much.
The next time I went to see my doctors I thought he would say I’d be allowed to dive again. But of course not. I was allowed to do 2 5m dives – same circumstances. The only problem was that it is very hard to find some 5m pools in my area. But ok, I got to manage that.
Finally, I was allowed to dive open water again! Limited at 10meters though, but YEAAAH YIPPIEEE YEAAH YEAH!
We went in a lake nearby and did a very nice, long but slow dive. When we checked our computers afterwards, our descending rate was 4 mps at most.
Another open water dive at 10m and I was allowed to go “normal” again.
After all, it took me about 4 months to get into water again…
I am very happy I am able to dive again and even though I’d never say “i’d take this again”, I am very thankful for this lesson.
I’m still very careful at de- and ascending, I am super-careful with my ears and I always check on my buddies 3 times or more once they seem to have some problems with their ear clearing.
divemone 