Ear Infection

Pour some tequila in your ear. If that doesn't work...try the mouth.

It gets worse. It gets tricky. Sometimes it ain't exactly an "ear" thing, goes further. I am guilty of self-treatment. I got a bilateral ear ache after swimming a meet. This was on a Saturday. Didn't want to bother the real doctor so I went and did my own treatment. Poured all sorts of stuff into ears, including alcohol, peroxide, OVC wax removers and other stuff. Almost went into prescription strengh pain medication. What a mess my pillows and bed were! On Monday I did the right thing and went to the ear doctor. She stuck the thingie into my ear and told me there was nothing wrong with the outer ear. My problem was an infection and inflammation of the inner ear. She prescribed some antibiotics, cortisone, and some nose drops. She also told me to stop doing what I was doing, which was trying to get my inner ear pressures fixed (like when diving deep). Took me about a week to get back to normal. The 600 mgs of Ibuprofen helped. In high school we always used the alcohol into ear method. Worked okay, to clean up and get rid of the water. I sometimes use ear plugs. I am getting some custom made ones from a phono guy next week. The sound of the swimp3 gets a lot better with tight ear plugs. Doctor, heal thyself. billy fanstone (also an M.D. but far removed from general practice, just a very specific anesthetist)

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Alcohol in the ears right after swimming and if you are lady drying your hair, shoot that dryer so it blows warm air in the ears while you are at it. Keep alcohol in your swim bag; it is a magnificent ear-infection preventative. Donna

"One thing to NOT do is use Q-tips to dry your ears. " Not using the Q-tips is probably the most important thing I learned. I don't usually both with ear drops, I just pour a little 99% rubbing alcohol into the bottle lid and dump it in my ear. It's cheap and very effective. When I started back to swimming I had to slap my hand a few times when I reached for the Q-tips.

For the outer ear I use a 50/50 mixture of alcohol/vinegar. Works GREAT! One thing to NOT do is use Q-tips to dry your ears. I did this for years, use a Q-tip, then the drops. Didn't get swimmer's ear but kept getting ear infections. After the zillionth ear infection my Dr. asked a bunch of questions about what I did with my ears, etc. When I got to the part about using Q-tips - "Ahhh Ha that's your problem. You're stripping all the protective ear wax off the ear drum and pool water is seeping behind the membrane and becoming infected....just use the drops." That was two years ago and I haven't had an ear infection since.

I get more ear infections when I swim in the morning. In the evenings it is only a short while until I go to bed and get some postural drainage of any residual trapped water. During a good workout my ears, nose, etc swell up a bit so there's often water trapped until the congestion eases up. Last year I had minor athlete's foot that got a bad secondary infection. One of the bacteria they found in the cultures was one that causes swimmer's ear (pseudomonas aeruginosa). Hope you enjoy the irony as much as I did. The doc did not treat the "swimmer's ear" between my toes and just went after the drug-resistant staph that was making me sick.