Last time I flew while being sick, my ears sustained some damage. The pain was unbearable to the point where the kid next to me asked his mom: “Why is the man next to me crying?” I wasn’t crying, but the tears just forced themselves out. For about a week afterwards, I felt partially deaf. Anyway, the recommendation I was given was to take a Sudafed about 2 hours prior to flying and then another one immediately before boarding. Does anyone have a better recommdation?
Tx.
Do you have time to call your doctor? If you explain your situation, he/she might be willing to prescribe something over the phone like a nasal spray. The nasal spray would help to clear up your eustacean tubes, letting some air get between your ears and nose.
There are OTC nasal sprays but I honestly cannot say what they do/how they differ from prescription ones.
If you can, I would call a doctor just to see if they recommend something. My doctor has been known to recommend OTC stuff over the phone, even.
My doctor quit his practice and moved to Florida 2 years ago. I haven’t needed a doctor since then. His 2 former partners are a couple of quacks, IMHO. I plan on finding a new doctor soon, but I just got sick and I’m flying tomorrow morning.
No great recommendations, just sympathy. I once took a long flight with a sinus headache, I spent the whole flight knowing with absolute certainty that my head was going to explode. The rational part of me told the other part of me “Don’t you think if flying with a sinus headache would make your head EXPLODE, I would have heard about it by now?” But the other part of me didn’t listen, the agony was too great.
If I had to do it again I’d take some OTC cold/sinus medicine that “may cause drowsiness,” hopefully that would either (a) clear my sinuses or (b) knock me out, or hopefully (c) both.
There’s an acupressure point that drains your sinuses instantly if pressed. I think I found it once (O glory day!) but I have never managed to do it again. Normally I’d use natural remedies like these but for me, a plane trip would be serious enough to go for the heavy pharmaceutical hitters.
ummm… say sorry to everyone as they get on the plane, because in three days time they are all going to have a headcold!
Other than that I can’t help you, sorry.
Hope the flight goes well
Alka Seltzer Plus Cold Medicine probably works faster and better than anything else for me to help clear ya up and get to feelin’ passable. For nose sprays, 4-Way and NeoSenephrin (sp?) seem okay, although medical folks advise you use those with caution. What I’ll never use again is Dristan, which left me without a sense of taste or smell for 6 months. Personal preferences, you may differ. Good luck.
I frequently have a difficult time equalizing pressure on descent, often with tremendous pain and impaired hearing for hours after landing. My doctor recommended Afrin and Sudafed. I use both in prodigious amounts starting 4-6 hours before landing.
This might be too expensive or time-consuming for you, but could you hie yourself off to an urgent care clinic? Those guys can give you a prescription steroid nasal spray, which works wonders, I find.
I’ve heard that nasal irrigation might help, too. We had a thread on neti pots and nasal irrigation here a while back. If you search for it, I bet you’ll be able to find it.
Also, do you know how to get your ears to pop? If you grab your earlobes and pull out and down, and then yawn, you can get your ears to pop, even if they’re stuffed. That should help at least somewhat. Then, when you’re done yawning, you swallow to get the eustacian tubes to close up again. If you can get used to the slightly odd feeling this generates, and you have the stamina to keep pulling on your earlobes, you can pull on the earlobes, yawn, and then don’t swallow, but keep pulling on the earlobes. That leaves the tubes open. You probably won’t be able to do that for more than 30 seconds or so, but it can still be pretty helpful when the plane goes through pressure changes.
Oh, and, if you wear an earring or earrings in your earlobes, take them out before you use the pull-on-the-earlobe-and-yawn technique.
Best of luck to you.
I have had patients ask me similar questions, and I have recommended that they consider a variety of techniques: Hydration, to ensure the secretions are as thin as possible, decongestants like pseudoephedrine or phenylephrine to shrink swollen nasal turbinates and eustacian tubes as much as possible, oxymetolazine OTC nasal spray to force the nasal passages open at need, and practicing popping one’s own ears gently.
I generally don’t recommend all these techniques at the same time, but the average patient can pick and choose which ones will work for them. Avoid decongestants if you’re on high blood pressure meds. Stay away from antihistamines, they thicken secretions.
If one has a week or so lead time, using either a nasal steroid spray (prescription) or a neti pot (sinu-cleanse) to rinse things out, are helpful maneuvers.
As a chronic sinus infection sufferer, my physician has in the past recommended that I use oxymetolazine 12-hour nose drops (Afrin, etc) when flying during a recurrence of the infection.
He specifically advised that when I apply the drops to each nostril I tilt my head back and to the side of said nostril in order to promote the effect of the drops on the eustacian tubes.
I have found this works wonders when I have difficulty equalizing after landing.
Follow the package directions and warnings! The stuff is rapidly habituating.
Wait…wouldn’t being “knocked out” be bad? You wouldn’t be awake to “pop” your ears. Like how babies with headcolds shouldn’t fly because they don’t know how to “pop” their ears by swallowing.
I can imagine falling asleep on the plane and waking up to the sensation of having your ear drum rupture. That is about the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced.
Yes.
Don’t fly.
But - assuming you MUST fly (for whatever reason), you want decongestants. Qadgop is a doctor, so I will let him make the recommendations.
Seriously, you CAN do permanent damage with pressure changes and blocked eustacian tubes. It’s rare, but it’s possible.
I have a story - a guy I knew flew with terrible sinus congestion. He was miserable. Then there was an audible creak and a very loud POP and a huge wad of snot flew from his nose into his lap.
He said it was disgusting, but it relieved the pressure. Sucked that he was in his dress uniform though.
I agree - skip the flight if possible. If you can’t equalise at all on descent, you get a barotrauma of the middle ear. Having given myself one while diving, I can’t recommend it - the tinnitus and fluid sloshing sensation is miserable, never mind the partial deafness and the pain. A friend of mine got the exact same effect when flying with a cold.
Can you not equalise at all, or do you just have trouble clearing your tubes? One thing that might help is the old trick of chewing (gum or similar) on the ascent and descent. This helps constantly equalise the pressure - if the differential gets too big, it jams the tubes shut and makes it impossible to equalise after a while. When diving, you can go up a bit, equalise and have another go at the descent ,but commercial jet pilots tend to be very unhelpful about doing this, for some reason.
Wow- this was exactly my experience as well. I started thinking- what will they do when blood starts leaking out of my ears? It wasn’t as if we could make an emergency landing, it was an overseas flight from Nice, France to LaGuardia in New York.
I was getting a massage once from a friend who was going to masseuse school and needed someone to practice on- certainly didn’t suck for me- and I’m laying face down, with my face in that little padded toilet seat thing, and all of a sudden my sinus started leaking like someone had turned on a kitchen faucet. She handed me a box of tissues, but for the next 20 minutes, my head was draining like crazy- I was expecting to see grey matter running out with it.
I feel for you, as I know how excrutiating that pain can be. I used to get it, and I couldn’t believe blood wasn’t trickling out my ears during landing.
My doctor advised what QtM did–over-the-counter decongestants ahead of time, and then Afrin or something similar just before and during flight. Personally, I know like the Mucinex stuff more than the Sudafed stuff, but you know better what works for you.
A flight attendant once recommended taking paper cups and holding them over my ears. She said it looked ridiculous, but might help. I can’t vouche for that, though. I mean, I can vouche for the fact that it looks stupid, but I have no idea if it somehow helps relieve the change in pressure on your eardrums.
I also highly recommend a neti pot, as mentioned earlier. I can’t see you using it on the plane, but it can do wonders for giving you some sinus relief today and tomorrow before the flight, and it may help your body gain some ground on the problem and prevent some of the flight pain. I think a slightly-saltier-than-normal formulation may help with the inflammation, but I’m no expert on that. You can get one at Whole Foods (I’m pretty sure) or try some similar health-related store. It takes a while to get used to, but it is worth it in my experience.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve flown with a head cold (it’s part of my job, so choosing not to fly isn’t always an option). Each time I’m convinced that I’m going to collapse a sinus or something bad like that. But I’ve only ever come close twice, so chances are you’ll be fine.
What I’ve done (and most of the people I’ve flown with do) are to pop your ears on the way up by cracking your jaw, and valsalva frequently on the way down. Have some Afrin-type nose spray with you, so on the way down if the valsalva doesn’t work and you feel pressure building in your sinuses, you can quickly use the Afrin, which should do the trick. Taking a decongestant beforehand wouldn’t hurt, either.
A quick, quick death.
Ohhhhhh man, do I ever remember this one. When I flew back from Spain last time with a mild head cold, landing in Amsterdam to change planes it felt like an ice pick in my head. I couldn’t even control my groans of pain. I thought something was seriously, seriously wrong so I visited the infirmary at Schiphol, where they told me about sinuses. I didn’t have any Sudafed, but I took some Tylenol right before landing in Montreal and that seemed to keep the grief to a minimum. I’ve since done the same coming back from London (for some reason I get colds when I travel) with similar results.
So, Jackknifed Juggernaut, you’ve taken your flight by now (or you found some way to delay the trip or go by train or something.) What did you decide to do about the sinus and eustacian tube problem, and how did it go?