Valsalver Manoeuvre

I can't hear out of my left ear and I'm panicking a little. 

I will spare you the unsavoury details only to say that I feel like I've fallen asleep under a Mr Whippy ice cream dispenser which was activated during the night filling my ear with a swirling slurry of earwax.  Sorry I really never had any intention of sparing you.

My worry is not because I think it's permanent, or that I fear for my wife's sanity now she has had a glimpse into life with a deaf me; but because I don't want my eyeball to explode. 

It's a common fear apparently and it nearly happened to me on an airplane as I descended from 30,000 feet.

It was that moment when you say to someone next you that you don't feel well and you can see the mild alarm in their eyes as they struggle to decide whether to say those few substantiating words that could send you plunging into the abyss.    

"Actually, you do look a bit pale"

Due to a blockage somewhere, pressure was building up in my sinuses and it had nowhere to go.  The pain above my left eye increased so much that I actually stopped thinking. I reached in several seconds a mental state that monks atop mountains spend forty years staring, wearing orange and ringing bells trying to achieve.  And I couldn't feel my legs.  

I was convinced my body was shutting down, preserving resources and directing blood flow to vital organs.  My eye began to water so profusely as if some clever bodily function was preparing me, damping down the site of the imminent explosion, or perhaps lubricating the area allowing the soon to be redundant eyeball a speedy exit from its socket.   It was of course neither of these things; it was just me crying.

This is when I attempted what I later learned to be the Valsalver Manoeuvre.  We've all done it at one time or another I'm sure, and it involves breathing out quite forcefully whilst the mouth is closed and the nose is pinched shut thus "popping" the ears.  Clearing the sinuses and ears in this way allows the pressure to normalise and hopefully relieves the pain.  It certainly brought the colour back to my face and distracted me somewhat as I continued to exhale as hard as I could believing my effort should at least match my level of pain.   In fact I didn't believe I would feel any relief until I had actually inflated my own head.

Finally, the airplane landed and I was able to speak again, wiggle my toes and generally recover.  Whilst some pain remained it did disappear within ten minutes or so.  

As a footnote, I am told that the Valsalver Manouevre can damage the eardrum and should only be used as a last resort.  Swallowing, yawning and sucking on those sweets you are sometimes offered before landing are much safer alternatives but not as much fun to watch someone attempt.

Half a bottle of eardrops and 30 minutes of aural douching in the shower have not remedied my current impediment so I have booked an appointment for syringing.  The old method of using a giant stainless steel syringe is now discouraged due to the number of eardrums that were perforated. The latest method involves a plastic probe which shoots pulses of warm water into the ear canal washing the offending flotsam and jetsam into a container one is obliged to hold underneath the ear.  Indeed if I had to wash out someone else's ears I would similarly, and at the very least, expect them to join in.

Pardon?

Once this procedure is completed and I board the airplane with my four bottles of nasal spray, I can rest easy knowing that I have every chance of surviving the flight unscathed.