Back in the early 80s I went to Freeport, Bahamas on a short vacation. Never having been on a tropical vacation (grew up in Michigan), I was fascinated by everything - especially the WARM water! Didn't know they made it that way.
Got talked into a snorkeling trip by my brother even though I was, at best, a very poor swimmer. Unfortunately, the snorkel boat did not have snorkeling vest - in fact, I'm not even sure they existed then. In any case I had no problem floating peacefully above the STUNNING display of colorful fishies and corals. I had never dreamed the sea could be so beautiful.
The next day we went out again but after snorkeling the captain suggested we free dive for some starfish while the boat drifted. I was a little leary of this "drifting" thing but I figured there were a bunch of us and the water was calm, so what could go wrong?
Floating along, I spied my prey and dove after it coming up with a very nice sized starfish. Unfortunately, I also came up minus on flipper. I remembered the captain's admonition about losing any gear so I tried to dive down through 12 feet of water to retrieve the flipper. That didn't work but I did succeed in losing my other flipper.
I decided that I really needed to stay over the flippers until someone else could dive down for them. Unfortunately, all the someone else's had drifted far, far away. I yelled and screamed and thrashed about but no one saw me. The situation was quickly becoming dangerous because I really did not know how to swim and I had no idea when I had learned to tread water!
I figured that, at worst, I could float on my stomach and snorkel but after trying this for a few minutes and getting water down the pipe, I started to get really worried. I had ingested too much seawater and I was on the verge of panic. "This is how stupid people die," I thought.
After the boat had drifted more than a mile, someone finally realized they were one customer short. I could see them start to turn so I yelled for all I was worth. The boat returned and the crew pulled me out of the water. I coughed up a LOT of seawater lying on the deck but I succeeded in my two missions. First, I pointed over the side and, sure enough, there were the fins. A crew member dove in and readily retrieved them. Second, I plopped my precious starfish on deck. Somehow I had held onto to it throughout the ordeal.
And then I made the worst decision of the day: I decided that I would never go swimming out on the ocean again without air strapped to my back. Upon returning to shore, we signed up for a resort SCUBA course.
This being the Bahamas, mon, the rules and regs were a little loose. We did a 15 minute intro to SCUBA in the pool and then boarded the dive boat. The first dive, in 12-15 feet of water was SPECTACULAR. I saw thousands of brightly colored fish, hundreds of colorful coral formations and - once, near the end of the dive - my instructor. I could hardly blame him for being hard to find since he was leading 12 students at the time all by himself. Besides, what could go wrong in 12 feet of water?
Emboldened by our successful first dive, my brother and I signed up for a second dive the following day - our last on the island before flying home late in the evening.
This next dive promised some real adventure because we were scheduled to go down to 65 feet. Yes, that's "sixtyfive feet" on a resort course with one sometimes present instructor. I just didn't know any better.
We received additional instruction for this dive when the instructor told us to not rise faster than our bubbles. Pretty sophisticated education.
At the dive site, we all got set to go and I, being the timid semi-swimmer, was last off the boat. And first to the bottom. Turns out I was overweighted a bit. When I hit the water, I went straight down. No stops, no slowing, no NOTHING. I hit hard on the bottom and wondered what the heck I was doing down there all by myself and why did my ears hurt so dang much?
I tried clearing my ears over and over and eventually got some relief but they were still plugged pretty good.
By the time the others arrived I had figured out that I had two weights in pockets in addition to my weight belt. Thank goodness for that because otherwise I am convinced I would have dropped the belt. Instead I dropped a couple weights and tried to remember where they were so I could pick them up before ascending.
Two weights lighter made me nice and neutral and I started to enjoy myself a bit. I thought it was pretty cool to stand on the bottom of the ocean. The ray I was standing on did not think it was so cool and gave me a dirt look before flying away after I discovered him. A HUGE jewfish tried to kiss me and nearly made me swallow my regulator. Being surprised by him caused me to suck a LOT of air and pretty soon I was getting low so I started up. Never did see the instructor.
Fortunately, I ascended slowly from our maximum depth of 85 feet (sends a shiver down my back even now) and arrived at the surface feeling fine except for my ears. I couldn't hear anything and everyone on the point was pointing at me and shouting and then I saw my brother. His mask was sloshing in blood. I shouted at him and he seemed fine and quite surprised to find all the blood from his nose when he took the mask off. With him safely aboard I finally climbed out and took my mask off - which was FILLED with blood. I don't know how I hadn't seen it. Both our noses were going pretty good and I had a little blood from one of my ears as well.
Oh well, all part of the sport I figured.
My ears hurt pretty good but I was eventually able to pop them a bit.
We returned to shore, packed up and headed for the airport.
Yup.
HOLY COW did that flight HURT!
I was practically in tears from ear pain but I worked real hard on equalizing during our descent and again achieved enough balance to prevent brain splitting pain - but not by much.
A week went by and my left ear still hurt so I went to the university infirmary and asked the doc to check it out. He looked in my left ear about 10 times and then started alternating between my left and right ear. Then he called an intern over and looked in HIS ear! Finally, he said "I think there's something wrong in there. You need to see a specialist."
Off to the ENT guy the next day. He looks in my ear, asks if I have been diving, how deep, flight interval - the whole bit. Then he tells me that my eardrum is INVERTED.
The next part is a bit fuzzy. I believe he gave me something to bite down on and then had me hold a tube just inside my nose. He said "Hold on just a second" and then hit some button...
AND MY CRANIUM OPENED AND EXPLODED ACROSS THE ROOM!
at least that's what it felt like.
I have never never never had such intense pain. The doc looked in the ear and declared me cured. He told me that no one would voluntarily submit to that kind of pain so he never tells his patients ahead of time what is going to happen. Doesn't get much repeat business either.
Years later now I have some minor hearing problems. I have some difficulty picking up conversation when there is a lot of background noise but I think that is fairly common and due more to the graceful aging process than anything else.
I went on two other resort course following this incident and it turned out my first errant instructor was the BEST of the resort course leaders! One in Hawaii nearly swam me to death (Do YOU know what it's like to suck a tank dry? I do.) The other in China stood (er..floated) by while I performed a minor rescue. He could have done it but the distressed diver was cute and I got there first so ...there!
Lesson learned: learn all the lessons. Now I am hooked up with some good guys locally and I am determined to do this right. Open water cert dives next week!
Got talked into a snorkeling trip by my brother even though I was, at best, a very poor swimmer. Unfortunately, the snorkel boat did not have snorkeling vest - in fact, I'm not even sure they existed then. In any case I had no problem floating peacefully above the STUNNING display of colorful fishies and corals. I had never dreamed the sea could be so beautiful.
The next day we went out again but after snorkeling the captain suggested we free dive for some starfish while the boat drifted. I was a little leary of this "drifting" thing but I figured there were a bunch of us and the water was calm, so what could go wrong?
Floating along, I spied my prey and dove after it coming up with a very nice sized starfish. Unfortunately, I also came up minus on flipper. I remembered the captain's admonition about losing any gear so I tried to dive down through 12 feet of water to retrieve the flipper. That didn't work but I did succeed in losing my other flipper.
I decided that I really needed to stay over the flippers until someone else could dive down for them. Unfortunately, all the someone else's had drifted far, far away. I yelled and screamed and thrashed about but no one saw me. The situation was quickly becoming dangerous because I really did not know how to swim and I had no idea when I had learned to tread water!
I figured that, at worst, I could float on my stomach and snorkel but after trying this for a few minutes and getting water down the pipe, I started to get really worried. I had ingested too much seawater and I was on the verge of panic. "This is how stupid people die," I thought.
After the boat had drifted more than a mile, someone finally realized they were one customer short. I could see them start to turn so I yelled for all I was worth. The boat returned and the crew pulled me out of the water. I coughed up a LOT of seawater lying on the deck but I succeeded in my two missions. First, I pointed over the side and, sure enough, there were the fins. A crew member dove in and readily retrieved them. Second, I plopped my precious starfish on deck. Somehow I had held onto to it throughout the ordeal.
And then I made the worst decision of the day: I decided that I would never go swimming out on the ocean again without air strapped to my back. Upon returning to shore, we signed up for a resort SCUBA course.
This being the Bahamas, mon, the rules and regs were a little loose. We did a 15 minute intro to SCUBA in the pool and then boarded the dive boat. The first dive, in 12-15 feet of water was SPECTACULAR. I saw thousands of brightly colored fish, hundreds of colorful coral formations and - once, near the end of the dive - my instructor. I could hardly blame him for being hard to find since he was leading 12 students at the time all by himself. Besides, what could go wrong in 12 feet of water?
Emboldened by our successful first dive, my brother and I signed up for a second dive the following day - our last on the island before flying home late in the evening.
This next dive promised some real adventure because we were scheduled to go down to 65 feet. Yes, that's "sixtyfive feet" on a resort course with one sometimes present instructor. I just didn't know any better.
We received additional instruction for this dive when the instructor told us to not rise faster than our bubbles. Pretty sophisticated education.
At the dive site, we all got set to go and I, being the timid semi-swimmer, was last off the boat. And first to the bottom. Turns out I was overweighted a bit. When I hit the water, I went straight down. No stops, no slowing, no NOTHING. I hit hard on the bottom and wondered what the heck I was doing down there all by myself and why did my ears hurt so dang much?
I tried clearing my ears over and over and eventually got some relief but they were still plugged pretty good.
By the time the others arrived I had figured out that I had two weights in pockets in addition to my weight belt. Thank goodness for that because otherwise I am convinced I would have dropped the belt. Instead I dropped a couple weights and tried to remember where they were so I could pick them up before ascending.
Two weights lighter made me nice and neutral and I started to enjoy myself a bit. I thought it was pretty cool to stand on the bottom of the ocean. The ray I was standing on did not think it was so cool and gave me a dirt look before flying away after I discovered him. A HUGE jewfish tried to kiss me and nearly made me swallow my regulator. Being surprised by him caused me to suck a LOT of air and pretty soon I was getting low so I started up. Never did see the instructor.
Fortunately, I ascended slowly from our maximum depth of 85 feet (sends a shiver down my back even now) and arrived at the surface feeling fine except for my ears. I couldn't hear anything and everyone on the point was pointing at me and shouting and then I saw my brother. His mask was sloshing in blood. I shouted at him and he seemed fine and quite surprised to find all the blood from his nose when he took the mask off. With him safely aboard I finally climbed out and took my mask off - which was FILLED with blood. I don't know how I hadn't seen it. Both our noses were going pretty good and I had a little blood from one of my ears as well.
Oh well, all part of the sport I figured.
My ears hurt pretty good but I was eventually able to pop them a bit.
We returned to shore, packed up and headed for the airport.
Yup.
HOLY COW did that flight HURT!
I was practically in tears from ear pain but I worked real hard on equalizing during our descent and again achieved enough balance to prevent brain splitting pain - but not by much.
A week went by and my left ear still hurt so I went to the university infirmary and asked the doc to check it out. He looked in my left ear about 10 times and then started alternating between my left and right ear. Then he called an intern over and looked in HIS ear! Finally, he said "I think there's something wrong in there. You need to see a specialist."
Off to the ENT guy the next day. He looks in my ear, asks if I have been diving, how deep, flight interval - the whole bit. Then he tells me that my eardrum is INVERTED.
The next part is a bit fuzzy. I believe he gave me something to bite down on and then had me hold a tube just inside my nose. He said "Hold on just a second" and then hit some button...
AND MY CRANIUM OPENED AND EXPLODED ACROSS THE ROOM!
at least that's what it felt like.
I have never never never had such intense pain. The doc looked in the ear and declared me cured. He told me that no one would voluntarily submit to that kind of pain so he never tells his patients ahead of time what is going to happen. Doesn't get much repeat business either.
Years later now I have some minor hearing problems. I have some difficulty picking up conversation when there is a lot of background noise but I think that is fairly common and due more to the graceful aging process than anything else.
I went on two other resort course following this incident and it turned out my first errant instructor was the BEST of the resort course leaders! One in Hawaii nearly swam me to death (Do YOU know what it's like to suck a tank dry? I do.) The other in China stood (er..floated) by while I performed a minor rescue. He could have done it but the distressed diver was cute and I got there first so ...there!
Lesson learned: learn all the lessons. Now I am hooked up with some good guys locally and I am determined to do this right. Open water cert dives next week!
