Wake up call from a past story

[dcunderh20]

I had a customer come into my business today who is The Reverend at a local church. We some how got on the topic of scuba diving when she brought up a man that helps out at their church that is disabled. She said some 15 years ago he had got the bends from diving and now has severe issues with walking, needing a walker to walk, and even some issues being able to function daily. Then she proceeded to tell me that another man who goes to their church in his early 50s who had a career in diving and underwater inventions had passed underwater due to a heart attack and left 2 young kids behind.

WOw. what a wake up call! I had just got done diving last weekend and the week before that. I am a new diver with 20 dives under my belt who wants to proceed with advanced training and maybe go on after that. This really puts a new perspective on things for me. It seems that this sport really has some risks involved and should be taken very seriously. It just makes me nervous to jump all in hearing these stories. What is your perspective on this...

 

[300bar]

Hmm, diving kills, yes it does.
But only when you F. up.

Sure accidents happen, but there's more of them on your daily road trip to work.
You don't even need a car for it.

When your time is up, for what ever reason.... YOU DIE easy as that.

 

[SoBay Jim]

If you drive a car, you risk getting into a potentially fatal accident. Yet, most of us still drive every day without a second thought.
If you purchase and eat food, there are risks that it was not prepared in a hygienic manner and you may become sick.
The list goes on and on. There are risks in many things we do, including diving. Most risks can be mitigated by being aware of them and adherence to safe practices.
Continue your education, pay attention to what is taught in class, ask questions if you don't understand, read the material and focus on mastering the skills. Then, get out and enjoy some beautiful dives.

 

[ScubaSteve]

Peruse the threads in this forum (that you posted in) and you will see far more wake-up calls than the two you heard of. Diving can be dangerous or it can be safe. It is entirely up to you and your instructor which it is.

The reality is, people do read about beautiful dives with lots of fish and think to themselves "This can be a safe sport if done right". But diving is inherently less risky than many other daily things.

 

[obsession600]

Invest in quality training and then follow it.
Your OW instructor should have impressed upon you the dangers involved in diving while she/he taught you how to mitigate those dangers.

 

[USdiver1]

Train and Practice your learned skills, repeatedly for your entire diving career.

I still regularly practice essential skills such as regulator recovery, no mask swim, and mask remove and replace, just about every time I get wet - and I've been diving for 34 years. If you have to do it in a real emergency, having done it in practice may keep you from panicking, and keep you level headed, which is what you need to be when facing an emergency.

Having your buddy practice these skills too also makes good sense, as you may need to rely upon your buddy to help you out on occasion. I find that spending a minute or two going through this with my buddy at the start of a weekend or week of diving helps to calm everyone's nerves and reduce any anxiety that may be present after a period of inactivity or arrival at an unknown location.

 

[DandyDon]

Welcome to SB. Those events are much too common in Nicaragua among untrained lobster divers but rare in recreational scuba. Keep your DAN dive insurance up, dive safe gear, follow your training and dive safely.

 

[g1138]

I say diving's the most dangerous and lucky sport in the world. There's people who dive uncertified every day via Discover Scuba diving. Granted they have an instructor by their side. But I will say that on my first discover scuba dive, I accidentally got away from the group for a good minute. No one in sight, alone in the clear waters of Cancun. Didn't have the knowledge to even know I had a computer or set of gauges clipped off to me (I don't even know which one it was).
Didn't know why we stopped midwater on ascent, didn't know why the instructor let out an SMB during our safety stop etc.

Lots of things can happen yet they don't. Divers dive all the time with buddies who don't have know how to perform even the most basic of unconscious rescues. Divers with unknown medical conditions (ie. PFO) can do many dives and never take a hit. That's what makes it lucky.

Yet lots of things can happen and sometimes they do. I swim through kelp a lot, and usually don't get tangled. Sometimes I do. Just the other day a fine gentleman drowned getting tangled in kelp.

Scuba diving is very dangerous. You're in an environment where the laws of physics and your whole perception of the world is turned vasty on it's head. It's something completely alien to what you will ever experience aside from a space walk. Yet like anything else that is dangerous, if you can accept those risks, and get the appropriate training and conditioning to reduce those risks as much as possible, then it's an extremely rewarding experience.

I'm glad you got your wake up call early.

 

[ItsBruce]

A turtle moves forward only when it sticks its neck out.

 

[TSandM]

It's GOOD to get a wake-up call, but it shouldn't make you rethink diving. You can die diving. You can die driving your car, or swimming in a pool, or running on a country path. You can't avoid dying; it's the one thing we are all going to do.

What you CAN do is manage risk. The statistics show that diving is actually rather remarkably safe, if just a few simple things are true. YOU have control over your body weight and fitness level. YOU have control over your gas supply, the planning and monitoring thereof. YOU have the ability to do a risk assessment for a given dive, and make sure it fits YOUR level of training and experience. And YOU can make sure your diving skills are solid, and that your emergency procedures are practiced regularly.

If you do all those things, you are probably, as people so often observe here, at greater risk of mortality driving to the dive site, than you are in executing the dive.