Rant: Hit 400 hours in the chamber and my ears started lying to me
So I'm a saturation diver out of Galveston and I keep a logbook, mostly just for me, and I finally added up my chamber time over this last rotation. 400 hours. That number snuck up on me, and the thing that got me was I'd been ignoring a little click in my right ear for a couple weeks because I figured it was just water. Turned out it was barotrauma starting, and the medic grounded me for 5 days. The crazy part is I felt fine on deck, but at 180 feet my equalizing got slow, like my ear was thinking about it first. I'm not saying 400 is some magic danger number, plenty of guys are way past that, but it got me paying attention to small stuff I'd been brushing off. Anyone else track their hours and notice a point where their body started sending little warnings? I'm wondering if I should've caught this sooner.