An Ear Problem and a barber....<br />

	So I have been diving for several years and very frequently and while I have not ruptured an ear drum I have sure bent one so I know how that feels. So when my ear started to feel full of water and tender to the touch I did what all divers do and used swimmers ear. This progressed for a week with little change.<br />
 Finally, admitting my ear was out smarting me, I saw my doctor. He said the outer canal was swollen due to bacteria and the eardrum was retracted. Sounds scary but apparently not a big deal as I did not even have to stay out of the water. A bottle of antibiotics and $25 prescription ear drops and I should be good as new in 10 days.<br />
	 This is good news as I was starting to worry. I continued the ear drops for a month and was still having relapses and sometime trouble hearing. I mentioned this to the local dive shop owner who has been running it as long as I have been alive. <br />
	He offered me "hair tonic" promising my ear would be better in two days if I used it each day. I backed up rather rapidly as he sounded a lot like he was selling snake oil. Several days later contemplating a trip to an ear nose and throat doctor I decided to try it all the while remembering "advice is only as good as you pay for" well specialty doctors cost a lot and I figured I could not make it worse. So I gave it whirl. Felt 90% better the next day. Who-ho!!!<br />
	 So if your local dive shop owner used to be a barber take his advice. Attached is an excerpt of was Divers Alert Network has to say about my ear problem. According to the dive shop owner a college lab confirmed the hair tonic has the same ingredients. Who knew?<br />

<p></p>According to Divers Alert Network…<br />
Diving Medicine Articles<br />
Can You Prevent Otitis Externa, or Swimmers Ear? <br />
The Answer is in the Solution <br />
By Edward Thalmann, M.D., DAN Associate Medical Director <br />
<p></p>The diving has been great all week. Now, while sitting in your room, you notice that one of your ears itches and feels wet. You look in the mirror and don't see any problem, so you go to bed. Next morning when you wake up, you feel a fullness in your ear and a twinge of pain. What a time for an earache! You wonder if you should cancel the day's diving. <br />
Your problem is probably otitis externa, a fancy name for an external ear infection sometimes called swimmers ear. As the name implies, it's usually associated with someone who swims a lot - and divers certainly fit that bill on dive-intensive scuba holidays. <br />
<i>The Cause </i>
Despite what most people believe, otitis externa is not caused by bacteria in the water: instead, it's triggered by the bacteria normally found in your external ear canal. Here's how these normally innocuous bacteria can become troublesome. <br />
With frequent immersion, water swells the cells lining the ear canal. Eventually, these cells pull apart - far enough for the bacteria normally found on the surface of your ear canal to get underneath the skin, where they find a nice warm environment and start to multiply. 
Next thing you know, your ear canal itches, is sore and becomes inflamed. If left untreated, the swelling can spread to the nearby lymph nodes and cause enough pain that moving your jaw becomes uncomfortable. At this point, the only treatment is antibiotics, and diving is definitely out. <br />
<i>Some History </i>
<p></p>When I first entered the Navy in 1972, I was asked to look into the problem of ear infections in saturation divers. These divers spend up to a month in diving chambers aboard ships, where they are kept at the same depth as the job they are performing in the sea, whether it's salvaging a sunken vessel or performing a research project. <br />
Each day these divers are transferred from the chamber to the work site in a diving bell. The divers spend a great deal of their time immersed. Both the chamber and the bell provide a hot, humid environment, perfect for breaking down the cellular lining of the ear canal; and the result is often otitis externa. <br />
<i>Prevention </i>
<p></p>Otitis externa was so prevalent at the time I entered the Navy that up to 20 percent of all saturation divers were expected to get it. I searched the medical literature and found an article that had the answer: instructors at a summer camp found that dripping an acidic drying solution into the ear at the beginning and end of each day virtually eliminated swimmer's ear in their young charges. The trick, however, was that the solution had to remain in each canal a full five minutes. If this part of the treatment was ignored, ear infections soon reappeared. 
To treat the Navy divers I decided to use Otic Domeboro®* Solution: 2 percent acetic acid, water, aluminum acetate, sodium acetate and boric acid. The acid retards bacterial growth, while the aluminum and sodium acetate act as astringents, drawing excess water out of the cells lining the ear canal. We had the divers put this solution in each ear canal twice a day and hold the solutions for at least five minutes at a time, timing them from outside the chamber.<br /> 
<i>The result?</i> <p></p>Otitis externa is no longer a problem in Navy saturation divers, and the above external ear prophylaxis remains a standard part of U.S. Navy Saturation diving procedure to this day. It's useful for sport diving, too, when there are frequent dives over several days.<br /> 
<i>Using the Solution </i>
<p></p>The only problem for sport divers is that Otic Domeboro Solution is a prescription drug, so you'll need to get it through a doctor. (Note: Bausch & Lomb and Qualtest make similar products.) And it's not cheap: a 2-ounce bottle costs in the neighborhood of $25. But that bottle should easily be enough for 60 or more days of use.