My experience of the physical effects of a rapid decompression & emergency descent.
We had an incident the other day, the outcome of which might have cause for some useful discussion.
I was flying (non-handling pilot) a small corporate jet at FL380, along with my colleague. Nice conditions, vmc, smooth etc, etc. We were just discussing whether or not to go up to FL400, when there was a moderate POP, followed by some hissing. Not exactly what one wants to hear when you're up so high. My colleague observed a cabin desent rate of 2000 - 3000 fpm, and we put on the oxygen masks. We carried out the memory items according to the book and followed procedures, which included, of course, an emergency descent.
Nothing very spectacular so far, except around, we think, FL300, my colleague felt a pressure change in his lungs, and my ears started to play up. My colleague was fine, no physical problems at all. I, on the other hand, was suffering such acute ear pain I nearly passed out. I was struggling to work through the checklist and make sense of what I was reading, and was starting to focus only on getting rid of this pain. This continued until we landed.
The long and the short of it was we got down fine, no problems for anyone else on board, everyone safe and sound. Turns out the blood vessels behind my eardrums have burst which is what caused the pain.
In all the simulator training I've done and all those practices we've done for rapid decompression and emergency descents, we've never discussed the effect of the decompression and the rapid descent on our ears, and how that could affect our ability to cope. I don't think I've ever met anyone who mentioned experiencing a real decompression and emergency descent, so its never crossed my mind that this could happen. If I had been the handling pilot, or if this had happened to my colleague who was handling at the time, we could have added pilot incapacitation to the list of SOPs we were trying to deal with.
My ears have been checked by the AME and I'm grounded for a couple of weeks. I asked why I was the only one affected - I have no allergies and haven't had a cold for over a year. He said it was just the luck of the draw - some folks will, some folks won't be affected by the pressure change. He also mentioned carrying a nasal spray - Afrin is the one he mentioned - as we are flying home today (Chicago/Manchester) and the descent part is kind of unavoidable. He said it is quite good at opening the eustachian tubes to relieve pressure - lets hope it works!
I'm throwing this out here for something to think about when discussing the rapid decompression/emergency descent scenario in the simulator in the future.