u/AlfieZeeb

Apologies in advance for long post/rant..

Diving is my dream sport. I love fish, coral, marine life, underwater mammals, all of it. I hope someday I will be a biologist too

I assume, since most people on this sub are divers you’ll understand my issue

I just CANNOT for the LIFE OF ME equalise. Is there something wrong with my ears?? I’ve been on flights (I know it’s nothing in comparison) that absolutely destroyed my ears. Recents have been fine but once I got so much pain from a regular altitude flight that I couldn’t hear properly for a week.

Every time after a flight, my ears pop for days. My ears kind of just pop constantly, on mild height changes in cars or anything at all. Doesn’t even matter. Sometimes I randomly swallow and my ears just pop anyway even though there’s no pressure change. I hate my ears. It means I can’t pursue the thing I want the most.

But I’ve tried all the manoeuvres people say. The Valsalva thing and the K tongue and blowing with your nose pinched none of it works. The only and I mean ONLY thing that can get my ears to pop is swallowing, which I know ain’t enough to do any diving.

I’ve dived before (once) to a very very impressive depth of about 5 meters. (I know, very deep) and it hurt so bad. I had to go back to 3 because it felt like my brain was going to explode. When I got back I was really dizzy.

I’m scared I will do permanent damage to my stupid ears if I try again. Maybe I need to do the “equalise before pain” which I did for my last flight (plane) and it worked well. No pain.

But swallowing isn’t enough for diving, and I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with my ears. Have I just not got the right ears for it?

I understand if this post gets no attention because it’s not really on topic (actual diving experiences) but I would really appreciate advice if you have it

TLDR: Cannot equalise on flights or diving, only swallowing works, worried I will never get to dive properly (10-30m?)

I used to play this game as a kid that was like monster taming. I remember it vaguely but I don’t have a concrete enough description to know what it was. Please help!!

(As a kid being 3-4 years ago, so the game is likely still active)

It was like Pokémon (pretty sure you caught your monsters and trained them up, it was riddled with in-app purchases)

One of the main aspects I found unique was the dungeon crawling. You’d go down down down in these deep grey-bricked dungeons and battle monsters and collect loot. Sometimes you’d come across like a “fountain” where if you drank the water you regained your health.

The game was 3d, but in the dungeons you had a fixed character perspective looking down on your char from above.

It was vaguely Asian styled, with guilds and character creation and semi-realistic mons. The mons you owned came in a sort of rotational format where you clicked on their profiles and got an overview of their stats.

Please help me find this game!!