pdxgal
Registered
Hi all,
Well I have a cautionary tale called How To Get Bent, otherwise known as The Stupidest Day of Diving Ever. This is a long post and if anyone reads it, I would be glad to hear anyone's opinions.
I haven't dived in ten years, but my husband and I were going to the Caribbean so we decided he would get certified and we would do some diving. We flew from our home in Oregon to Saba. I can't sleep on flights so I was pretty trashed by the time we got to Saba (had slept only a few hours during our redeye flight overnight) and then when we got to Saba I began to worry and become nervous for the next day of diving. I then couldn't sleep again, so in the two nights preceding my first dives in ten years I got maybe 2 hours of sleep each night. I was no doubt dehydrated, too.
The next day I get on the boat and we do a multilevel dive down to about 80 feet at max depth, gradually ascending throughout the dive to maybe 40 feet before surfacing. We were diving based on our dive master's computer and he said it would be "to NDL." I was sucking air out of nervousness and surfaced a good 15 minutes at least before everyone else did (they stayed down about an hour). The mooring line was at 40 feet and as I recall I surfaced along the line at probably a good pace, but who knows, maybe I went too fast? That's not even the best part.
I didn't do a safety stop. Why? I just forgot. How can I defend this? I can't. It was just stupidity.
I was scheduled to do three dives that day but after I got up, I felt OK except seasick. I decided to sit out the next dive and went to the hotel, where I immediately laid down on the hotel room bed and slept for an hour straight. Total surface interval was about 2.5, maybe 3 hours. Went back to the boat feeling great. Did the second dive, the same site, multilevel down to about max 70 or 75 feet this time and I was down a bit longer, maybe 50 minutes instead of 45? Again surfaced before everyone else for the same reason (fast air consumption). Again, dubious ascension and no safety stop. Again, indefensible. Afterward I felt great. We went back to the hotel and everything was fine.
The next day I felt great, went back and did three dives, and felt much better about everything. This time I did the safety stops as required and ascended appropriately. I thought, "Wow, wtf was I thinking not doing the safety stops yesterday?" I went back to the hotel and thought about the risks I had taken the day before and googled "DCS symptoms." I had a pain in my ankle, typical to pains I've had before. It felt like a mild tweak due to the fins or possibly the massive amounts of climbing up and down Saba's copious hills and steps. I'm serious, this is the steepest place I've ever vacationed. The cars back to the hotel had trouble nagivating the hills at least twice, and our room was up so many steep flights of steps that I had to take a break to breathe about halfway up! So I hadn't thought twice about the mild ache in my ankle.
Reading about DCS symptoms, my hypochondria, which has been a problem all my life, began to loom. I began to feel my ankle pain magnify to enormous acuity (given that it's now gone away, and it only occurred while walking or flexing the ankle, and was minor, this seems to have not been a symptom of DCS). Then I thought, "Wow, my feet are tingling...I think....Are they tingling?" (it was really minor.) "But they always tingle like this. Is this the bends?" I concentrated on them. The tingling seemed to become more obvious. I only noticed it when I thought about it, but I began to think about it all the time. It was bilateral. I asked the hotel owner, himself a dive instructor, what he thought. He said, "I'm no doctor so I can't say. But I think you're fine." I asked the dive shop what they thought. They said, "That was really not smart of you. That's how people get hurt. If we had known it had been ten years, we would've had you in the pool doing a refresher. That said, stop worrying....it sounds like you're fine."
Over the course of a few days the feet tingling went away. A week after the two days of diving, last night, I flew from the Caribbean to Portland. On the flight I began to worry about the DCS again. I thought my hands felt a little clumsy. I touched my fingers to my nose (it worked). I woke up today still feeling like my hands were clumsy. I called DAN. They said, "We can't diagnose you over the phone....get checked out by a doctor. But honestly, the possibility that this is DCS is very low."
What do you think? Should I stop worrying about DCS and start worrying about how to avoid making these mistakes in the future? Although honestly that's not much of a question. What I did wrong is glaring and pretty damn obvious.
Either way, stupid got cured.
---------- Post added January 6th, 2013 at 01:29 PM ----------
Should also clarify that the seasickness went away minutes after getting off the boat. I took Dramamine subsequently and it never recurred.
Should also note that DAN felt that my symptoms were unlikely DCS because a) I didn't notice symptoms until about a day or more after the dives, b) the symptoms are consistent with psychosomatic ones, c) the hand clumsiness was not accompanied by numbness or tingling and occurred after a flight, yes, but about a WEEK after the dives, and c) bilateral is not what they usually expect to see.
Well I have a cautionary tale called How To Get Bent, otherwise known as The Stupidest Day of Diving Ever. This is a long post and if anyone reads it, I would be glad to hear anyone's opinions.
I haven't dived in ten years, but my husband and I were going to the Caribbean so we decided he would get certified and we would do some diving. We flew from our home in Oregon to Saba. I can't sleep on flights so I was pretty trashed by the time we got to Saba (had slept only a few hours during our redeye flight overnight) and then when we got to Saba I began to worry and become nervous for the next day of diving. I then couldn't sleep again, so in the two nights preceding my first dives in ten years I got maybe 2 hours of sleep each night. I was no doubt dehydrated, too.
The next day I get on the boat and we do a multilevel dive down to about 80 feet at max depth, gradually ascending throughout the dive to maybe 40 feet before surfacing. We were diving based on our dive master's computer and he said it would be "to NDL." I was sucking air out of nervousness and surfaced a good 15 minutes at least before everyone else did (they stayed down about an hour). The mooring line was at 40 feet and as I recall I surfaced along the line at probably a good pace, but who knows, maybe I went too fast? That's not even the best part.
I didn't do a safety stop. Why? I just forgot. How can I defend this? I can't. It was just stupidity.
I was scheduled to do three dives that day but after I got up, I felt OK except seasick. I decided to sit out the next dive and went to the hotel, where I immediately laid down on the hotel room bed and slept for an hour straight. Total surface interval was about 2.5, maybe 3 hours. Went back to the boat feeling great. Did the second dive, the same site, multilevel down to about max 70 or 75 feet this time and I was down a bit longer, maybe 50 minutes instead of 45? Again surfaced before everyone else for the same reason (fast air consumption). Again, dubious ascension and no safety stop. Again, indefensible. Afterward I felt great. We went back to the hotel and everything was fine.
The next day I felt great, went back and did three dives, and felt much better about everything. This time I did the safety stops as required and ascended appropriately. I thought, "Wow, wtf was I thinking not doing the safety stops yesterday?" I went back to the hotel and thought about the risks I had taken the day before and googled "DCS symptoms." I had a pain in my ankle, typical to pains I've had before. It felt like a mild tweak due to the fins or possibly the massive amounts of climbing up and down Saba's copious hills and steps. I'm serious, this is the steepest place I've ever vacationed. The cars back to the hotel had trouble nagivating the hills at least twice, and our room was up so many steep flights of steps that I had to take a break to breathe about halfway up! So I hadn't thought twice about the mild ache in my ankle.
Reading about DCS symptoms, my hypochondria, which has been a problem all my life, began to loom. I began to feel my ankle pain magnify to enormous acuity (given that it's now gone away, and it only occurred while walking or flexing the ankle, and was minor, this seems to have not been a symptom of DCS). Then I thought, "Wow, my feet are tingling...I think....Are they tingling?" (it was really minor.) "But they always tingle like this. Is this the bends?" I concentrated on them. The tingling seemed to become more obvious. I only noticed it when I thought about it, but I began to think about it all the time. It was bilateral. I asked the hotel owner, himself a dive instructor, what he thought. He said, "I'm no doctor so I can't say. But I think you're fine." I asked the dive shop what they thought. They said, "That was really not smart of you. That's how people get hurt. If we had known it had been ten years, we would've had you in the pool doing a refresher. That said, stop worrying....it sounds like you're fine."
Over the course of a few days the feet tingling went away. A week after the two days of diving, last night, I flew from the Caribbean to Portland. On the flight I began to worry about the DCS again. I thought my hands felt a little clumsy. I touched my fingers to my nose (it worked). I woke up today still feeling like my hands were clumsy. I called DAN. They said, "We can't diagnose you over the phone....get checked out by a doctor. But honestly, the possibility that this is DCS is very low."
What do you think? Should I stop worrying about DCS and start worrying about how to avoid making these mistakes in the future? Although honestly that's not much of a question. What I did wrong is glaring and pretty damn obvious.
Either way, stupid got cured.
---------- Post added January 6th, 2013 at 01:29 PM ----------
Should also clarify that the seasickness went away minutes after getting off the boat. I took Dramamine subsequently and it never recurred.
Should also note that DAN felt that my symptoms were unlikely DCS because a) I didn't notice symptoms until about a day or more after the dives, b) the symptoms are consistent with psychosomatic ones, c) the hand clumsiness was not accompanied by numbness or tingling and occurred after a flight, yes, but about a WEEK after the dives, and c) bilateral is not what they usually expect to see.
