Getting Through a Long Flight (Pain Management)

[Andy9214]

It depends on the problem you have with your ETs - have you asked your doc?

Doctor said just to use Afrin and it should be okay, but I'm still worried

 

[MSF]

I was on a flight wearing foam plugs. At one point my right ear popped (with the foam plugs); at that point my sound changed in my right ear...kind of like a fleeting tinnitus sound (flat, thin, tonal) and after some seconds it went back to original sound. Does this mean something that my sound changed with the pop?

This also happened to me recently both using earplugs and also custom fitting musicians earplugs. Both times that happened when we were still reaching our main altitude and it was fairly unpleasant when it happened. I suspect that what was happening is that as the pressure changed inside the inner ear, there was some pressure on the eardrum, but because you had an earplug on the other side this created positive pressure against the eardrum so the eardrum was basically getting pressure from both sides (or something to that effect). I don't think this will have any lasting effect but it did lead to some H like dull pain for the duration of flight.

Finally by the third and then fourth flight, basically just waited until all ear clearing had happened, including the spontaneous pressure change that would happen on my left side, and then I went ahead and put my plugs in. I then put some noise cancelling headphones on top of these to watch films, which was sort of effective.

But between stuff like this, bumping your headphones on something (loud!!), risking ear drum damage from suction when removing earplugs, etc., I really do wonder if all the various preventative measures I take actually lead to more stress/damage than if I was losing anything at all!