DCBC,
Thanks again for sharing. However, your situation now seems so extreme, that I certainly would not ever be found in a similar situation and neither would most recreational divers. The bends due to Helium bubbles is entirely different than the bends due to Nitrogen bubbles. In addition, the dive profile of your buddy is also entirely different than anything that either I or most other recreational divers would even dream of doing. Helium toxicity and Helium caused bends affect the body differently, so your experience can not be translated and applied to what I have been reading.
For instance, the onset time of symptoms due to Helium bubbles is much faster and probably more severe than those due to Nitrogen bubbles - from what I read, so then IWR becomes much less of an option. And I agree with you that anyone diving on Helium, should have a team and chamber at the ready anyway.
As to the statement by DevonDiver that it's a fallacy that tech diver do IWR frquenetly, all I can say is I am quoting one here who went to the workshop in Sydney:
JERRY CHIA: I’ll say that this sort of situation happens quite regularly – maybe not to
the extent of this particular victim – and it’s never reported. And also the profile of the
diver does not fit a technical diver. But, yes, I think straight back in the water, definitely.
No doubt about it. In the group of divers that I dive with, we don’t have this sort of
problem occurring regularly, but there’s no reason not. The facilities are there. There is
reasonable expertise to do it. And it’s never reported.
Also from the Workshop:
ALF BRUBAKK: I think probably the most used recompression procedure in the world
is recompression on air in-water. This is used by a lot of people who dive all around
the world with procedures that give them an enormously high risk of decompression sickness. In the little studies I’ve been participating in, the divers don’t know much
about how to do IWR and do it in many different ways. I would suggest that it is high
time we start to study this seriously to see if it is an option, because it appears to me
the U.S. Navy procedure presented is impractical for many of these divers. The data
seems to indicate that if the point is to get rid of the bubbles, you get rid of them much,
much quicker with IWR and can even go back to the surface with a very few bubbles
and repeat the IWR. There are many tricks that can be used probably. I think one of the
problems that we have is that we call it treatment. I would suggest we call IWR
advanced first aid and get around the treatment thing. Then we can go on and do all
the normally accepted treatments afterwards. We should be calling IWR "advanced first
aid." I can remember the discussions of about 20 years ago whether lay people should
be allowed to do CPR: "Only doctors could do it, because CPR could injure." Now
we’re doing CPR all over the place. I suggest that we really seriously to look at IWR
and start programs to actually study how to do it effectively.