…runs through New Mexico. In late August, I left Loreto in Baja California Sur and drove 1,100 miles to Taos where Rande had spent the summer. Our plan was to drive to Whidbey Island in northern Puget Sound to visit her family, but first I had to deal with an ear problem. On what turned out to be my last dive of the summer in the Sea of Cortés, I had what diver’s call reverse squeeze – a sharp pain in one ear as I returned to the surface. I couldn’t equalize (reduce) the air pressure in my ear with the pressure of the surrounding water.
The next day, I went to the emergency clinic in Loreto and
learned that I had an infection in one ear. The doctor, a young woman who
spoke some English, gave me a prescription for antibiotic ear drops and told me
to stay out of the water for two weeks. My summer of diving was over. Before
leaving Mexico, I made an appointment online for an ear specialist in northern
New Mexico. When I arrived at his office in Taos a week later, the infection
was gone, but he sent me to a clinic in
Los Alamos to test for a tear in the eardrum. They pressurized the outer ear and waited; a decline
in pressure indicates a tear. I passed the test; I could go back in the
water.
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| Rio Grande south of Taos, New Mexico |
