A mysterious and frustrating pain

[patrick.n]

Hi all, I wonder if anyone has experienced anything like this..
I was at the lake on saturday for my first open water experience. First off, a few warm up duck dives to a couple of metres. All good. Feeling great. Very comfortable, relaxed and happy.

Then on to a line. Now this was my first experience of pulling down a line, and shortly after leaving the surface began to feel a stabbing pain in the back of the head that got worse with increasing depth, and lessened as I came back up, but persisted slightly for some time afterwards.

It was not an equalisation problem, the ears were fine, this was round the back of the head at the top of the neck.. I never got past 3 metres or so, and after a couple more tries to see what was going on it was bad enough that I could only get my head down about a metre. I stopped trying and had a break for lunch.
A couple of hours later tried again with the same result - duckdive very comfortably and relaxing, but pulling down the line from the surface I got The Pain.

I'll be seeing my chiropractic guru tomorrow morning, but in the meantime I wondered if anyone was familiar with this?

Patrick

[drunkinbda]

i have no idea at all about this, but just wanted to ask..

was the pain just from being at depth, or did you feel it more when you would look up/down and move your head?

[trux]

Yes, drunkinbda may be on the right track - almost all novices in freediving do the mistake that they bend their head, trying to look in the direction they swim, instead of keeping the head stright (in a relaxed position). Not only it leads to a worse blood supply of the brain, and can cause possible premature blackout, it adds a lot of drag, it adds to muscle tension and increases the oxygen consumption, but you also squeeze nerves in your spine which may be painful.

[patrick.n]

Well, it increased with depth, and the last time I went down I hung on the line for a while deep enough to feel it but not hurt too much, and I relaxed there, stretched the back, moved head around, rubbed neck etc trying to clear the tension or whatever was causing it. Moving the head didn't seem to make any difference.
In hindsight the second time I went in I should have duckdove, then grabbed the line to see if there's something in that initial pull from the surface that disagrees with me.
I'll be testing things out next time I get in the water.

[billieball]

You actually have a set of sinuses near the back of the head. The pain from these can radiate nearly anywhere on your head. I speak from experience, as I had to have sinus surgery a couple of years ago. Every sinus cavity in my head was hollowed out, bones were broken that honeycombed in-between the cavities, yada, yada. Before the surgery, I would have crazy pains in different places in my skull...even on the front of my face. Now, I wasn't diving then, but the pansinusitis I had at the time meant that every sinus cavity was filled with infected crud. I probably couldn't have gone down 1 meter had I been diving.
Sorry for rambling...just thinking that maybe you could have some sinus issues. If so, they could clear up on their own. If they don't, seeing a doc is the next step.

[trux]

Hm, interesting, I never heard about cavities in the back of the skull (except the big one where normally brain resides). I tried looking it up now on Internet, but all documents speaking about sinus cavities only show paranasal sinus cavities that are in the facial part. I did not manage to find any reference to any cavity in the back of the head. It does not mean I do not believe you, but would like to know more about it. Could you post some reference to them, or perhaps their exact location?

[patrick.n]

OK, saw my chiro, and he gave me a working over. Seems there was some tension with the jaw/eustacian tube/upper neck collection, which apparently are linked and can suffer together. The location of pain isn't necessarily where the source is, eh?
I also didn't know about the sinus at the back. However, wouldn't that also have been affected when I duckdived before going to the rope?
I'm going to the pool at the weekend to go down and up a few times. pull down the steps maybe to try and replicate the action on the rope.
Hopefully it's all cleared.

Thanks for your answers.

[billieball]

Patrick, glad to hear you seem satisified with your chiro visit. "Radiating" or "referring" pain is quite interesting, no? I once had a sinus infection that caused my lower teeth to hurt. Not the top ones...but the lower ones. The pain was "referred," according to my physician.

Trux, the sinuses located further back in the head (and which can be quite tricky to operate on, as one has to manuever around/through areas very near the brain) are called sphenoid sinuses. We have eight total sinus cavities (unless there exists an abnormality...in which case we can have more or fewer): maxillary, ethmoid, frontal, and sphenoid. Not only is the sphenoid more difficult to reach for treatment, it is also not very large. It is not EXACTLY in the "back of the skull," just further/deeper in the head than the others. Sorry if I misled you with my words. I can definitely tell you that having an infection in the sphenoid sinus cavities causes pain to radiate all over the back and top of the skull...at least in my fairly uncommon case (pan-sinusitis isn't exactly a regular occurrence in the medical field).
The following link is to a page with diagrams and CT scans which explains the placement of the different cavities, and their relation to other parts of one's anatomy. In my case, most of the honeycombed bones were broken apart and sucked out, as well as the linings of the sinus cavities being shaven (additional work done included turbinoplasty, septoplasty, and some other kind of gory stuff).
Sinus CT Scan, Sinusitis - W. S. Tichenor, M. D.

Glad you're interested, Trux, and again...sorry if my layperson's referral to the exact anatomy of the human sinuses caused any confusion and/or frustration.
Cheers!

[trux]

Thanks for the details, Billie. It was sure no big fun, but I hope it is long gone, and that the operation was worht it! Well, from what you wrote it definitely was.

[billieball]

You know, Trux, I often think I may have an unfair advantage when compared to my fellow freedivers (and scuba divers). I've never had problems equalizing...and I can't help but think it may be related to my WIDE OPEN sinus cavities!
Cheers,
Billie

[cdavis]

If it is a sinus block, a double dose of sudafed is likely to open the passage. If that works, you know what the problem is.

Connor