Bob,

I hope that she can dive again with you and that their diagnosis is
incorrect.  

John K. Luedeman
Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Sciences and Teacher Education
Clemson University
864 882-6735 (H)
864 656-5129 (O)


-----Original Message-----
From: SCUBA or ELSE! Diver's forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Reef Fish
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 8:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SCUBA-SE] It's deja vu all over again, except the Fat Lady sang
this time

It is with a very sad and heavy heart that I am informing
my diving friends that the doc at the Cozumel Hyperbaric 
Chamber informed Sue that she should check with her ENT
when we get home that she may not ever dive again because
of her repeated puncture and other problems with her ears.

It all started in 1988 when Sue was doing her 2nd dive
after certification in Jamaica, supposedly getting warmed
up for our Cozumel dive trip a week later.  She punctured
the other ear drum that kept her from diving in Cozumel.
Her first ear puncture was due to a severe cold before
1970.

Things went well until 1999 when Sue re-punctured one of
her eardrums while we were diving with Crusty on the 
Cayman Aggressor, about a month or two before the 
Coz99NEDfest -- which kept her from attending that event.

Since then, she had been under the care of several 
different ENT specialists, and she uses a prescription
spray to clear her sinuses, daily a week before diving,
and during her dive days.

That kept things in check for several years until she
started getting pin-hole punctures in her ear on EVERY
dive trip of the past several, from Nuku Iva in the
French Polynesia in 2004, to Tobago in 2004, to our only
dive in Cozumel in 2005.  

On this trip, she had to surface about 10 minutes into
the first dive because of vertigo symptomatic of her
pin-hole puncture of the eardrum.  But she didn't have
the usual accompanying pain with the puncture, and she
felt okay after the ENT-prescribed nasal spray to try
to do the 2nd, shallow dive.  She had to abort the dive
during her descent.

The DAN Hyperbaric Chamber doc diagnosed her to have 
pin-hole puncture and middle ear squeeze of both ears,
and the verdict, given Sue's history, that her diving 
days are over, subject to her consultation with her
regular ENT.

It's one of those "sh*t happens" kind of things, but 
WHY Sue is catching all the "sh*t" that belonged to 
ME, for my deep diving ears and my absence of any 
cancer from decades of heavy smoking?

There ain't no god and no justice for these kinds of 
"sh*t", and life and the devil march on.

da Feeesh.