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[stillsostrange]

Has anyone out there ever ruptured an eardrum? Do you know what recovery time is like? Any nifty telling details or horror stories?

Comments

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

My friend Amanda ruptured an eardrum while scuba diving once. Her balance was shot for six weeks while she recovered.

[rhia-hilldancer.livejournal.com]

my son had a ruptured eardrum. he leaked fluid for like two weeks. it probably took about a month before his hearing fully returned. he had to keep cotton in it. he says it still hurt like crazy. the last week it stopped being so painful.
first was sharp pain. he woke up in the middle of the night, and he heard fluid running around in his ear. he came to me and said it hurt and i looked in it, but i saw nothing. on his way back to bed he felt a very sharp pain, and that is when it started leaking a mixture of blood and a clear fluid. his pillow was gross the next morning, and the way to the doctor, he was in such pain he could barely hold up his head. the eardrops that the doctor gave him didn't really do much for pain reduction at first. my husband's eardrum ruptured a week later. when he gets up i'll ask him if he has any fun details to add.

[wldhrsjen3.livejournal.com]

My brother and his best friend were playing a rowdy game of football in our back yard several years ago when his friend tried to dodge a tree. He ducked under the branches but misjudged and ended up running a small branch right through his ear drum. (owwwww)

The ER doc flushed it out, gave him some antibiotics, and basically told him it would heal on its own in a few weeks. The friend claimed it didn't hurt much after the initial injury, but he said everything sounded funny for a couple of months. :/

[clarentine]

I did, way back when I was little. I don't remember pain (but then I have a very high tolerance), but I do remember the mess on the pillow. And my hearing on that side is not the same as on the side that did not rupture. I don't know why it ruptured. I don't think it was trauma, more likely illness.

My sister's son ruptured both eardrums simultaneously a while ago, a result of a cold or illness of some sort; I remember that she said he was in a lot of pain.

[stevenagy.livejournal.com]

I don't remember any overwhelming pain. Happened about 10 years back. Docs told me I had apparently ruptured it a while back from the scarring they found. Probably when I was a kid.

Ear infections were a regular thing that followed.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I ruptured both drums during a seriously bad earache in childhood, and it either happened in my sleep, or was indistinguishable from the pain of the earache up to that point, or was less painful than the earache was in general, because I didn't notice the exact point of rupture. The pain was so miserable, that was the only time I can ever recall that my babysitter had to call my mom from work and come get me. Natch, since my mom was a nurse, she just took me back to work with her, and I spent the night in the ER, dozing behind a curtain (but only because she was an ER nurse). (Which is why I have an abnormal fondness and sense of comfort from being in ERs.)

I was 11 at the time, so my memory is not fully reliable, either, but the thing that was amazing to me was that the pain went *away* after the rupture, because the hole in my drum alleviated the pressure by letting the fluid drain away. The ruptures were confirmed by an ER peds doc about an hour after I arrived, and to this day, I can't sort which of the pains was the rupture and which the earache, but the relief was so vast that when I get earaches now I find myself wishing my drum would rupture.

I had no hearing loss afterward, no nausea, nothing, really. Just the sweet relief.

[britmandelo.livejournal.com]

Happened to me three times as a kid, because I got these horrible infections. Two of them the doctor did with a needle to let the pressure off, one I waited until it tore itself. The first two obviously didn't take too long to heal, but still have problems with the ear from the last one thanks to the scar tissue. And I was deaf in that ear for like, three weeks.

It's a bit fuzzy since I was like, nine. But I remember pain. Lots and lots of pain. (Especially if I got water in that ear. Ugh.)

[kelljones.livejournal.com]

This is an odd thing to comment about way-after-the-fact, but catwaxing will do that. I had ear infections that ruptured my eardrums several times as a child and once as an adult. I remember the feeling of building pressure (a lot like being on an airplane with a cold and desperately wanting your ears to pop), then piercing hot sharp pain when the eardrum actually ruptured, and then enormous relief. Mine never really hurt once they'd popped, but yes, the eardrum doesn't really work until it heals, so I was pretty much deaf in that ear.

The weirdest thing? Is that when I put the eardrops in the ear (just to keep it from being infected -- they pretty much heal on their own) -- I could taste the eardrops stinging the back of my throat in a particularly disgusting way. (Thus compelling me to post in case you can use it.) Because, yanno, they're all connected once you get a hole there. And yeah, they really don't recommend getting water in there until it's healed (I assume to guard against infection), which gets kind of complicated. Oh, and my balance was fine, it not involving the inner ear.

Er. Nice to meet you...