Problem in a "Rescue" class

[Texasguy]

Next time to increase air volume in the regulator, press purge all the way (or some to control the flow). This will get you MUCH more air than just breathing in on a regulator using your lungs.

 

[dmaziuk]

It is very possible that you encountered something called laryngospasm. As a result of getting water into your airway during the regulator exchange, your vocal cords went into a bit of spasm and narrowed.

This sounds like the extreme version. (Note that I'm a trained swimmer, normally when I breath in a bit of water I cut the inhale short and cough it out on the exhale, without slowing down.) I had once breathed in a drop of water that hit just the right spot and made me choke, stop and grab on to the divider for a couple of seconds. If I had that happen at the bottom of the pool, I'd probably want up and out, too.


There was an exercise supposed to relieve the spasm caused by a hit to the windpipe in one of my a**-kicking classes, but you need to be out of the water for that...

 

[Land Fish]

Did the other diver give you the reg with the purge covered? If your first breath was full of water, good luck stopping the choking that follows. I see divers handing off the reg with their hand completely covering the front of the reg all the time while practicing skills.

"the reg with the purge covered" would you explain a bit more please? Sorry I don't quite understand what it means. Thanks!

 

[The Laconic]

we were doing an exercise when you had to share air with a diver that was tired and panicking

Wait, what the heck was this exercise? A tired diver doesn't need to share air. A panicking diver doesn't need to share air. Were they supposed to be out of air and tired and panicking? Also on fire, perhaps?

 

[Rooster59]

"the reg with the purge covered" would you explain a bit more please? Sorry I don't quite understand what it means. Thanks!

I mean the person handing you the reg has their hand over the whole front of the reg, covering the purge valve. You can't purge the reg due to their hand, and have to rely on enough air in your lungs to purge the reg by blowing out before you breathe from the reg. If you don't have enough air left to purge the reg, you'll breathe some water on the first breath you take from their reg.

 

[lowviz]

...//... have to rely on enough air in your lungs to purge the reg by blowing out before you breathe from the reg. If you don't have enough air left to purge the reg, you'll breathe some water on the first breath you take from their reg.

There is a way around this.

Curl your tongue around to the roof of your mouth and make a strong "clucking" sound. Three times. This will vibrate the secondary reg's diaphragm enough that you can take a clean breath.

 

[kr2y5]

Has anyone ever felt something like this ?

I experienced what seems like the same symptoms during a swim test in my Fundies class, breathing air from the surface, no scuba equipment involved. Too much excitement and self-induced pressure, combined with rusty swimming technique, resulted in inhaling water during the last lap, and a brief choking episode that made me almost stop midway through. I continued very slowly, wheezing. It started to get easier towards the end of the lap, fortunately it was the last one, but it still left me coughing after getting out of the water. Felt normal after several minutes. My money is on a mild version of the laryngospasm that TSandM has described.

 

[Sandie7]

It is very possible that you encountered something called laryngospasm. As a result of getting water into your airway during the regulator exchange, your vocal cords went into a bit of spasm and narrowed. At that point, the regulator isn't the limiting factor in how well you can breathe at all -- your own airway is. The only thing you can do with laryngospasm is wait it out and not panic. It WILL release, eventually. If you can get some air through, you will certainly survive the event if you remain calm. A friend of mine was practicing air-sharing in a cave class, IN the cave, when he was careless and didn't purge the regulator he put in his mouth. He went into full laryngospasm and could move no air at all. He had to wait until it resolved, hoping it would do so before he lost consciousness. It's a scary thing. There is no real treatment (positive pressure ventilation can sometimes break the spasm, but it's not easy to do that underwater), so the best thing is prevention, which means carefully purging any regulator before you begin to breathe from it.

Your description fits exactly what I felt. Now I understand it was not the regulator - it was me.

I can't imagine how much control your friend had when he felt that in a cave.

However, from the point of view of a rescuer, what can done to avoid this when giving air to a diver that is panicking and will probably not remember to purge the valve ?

---------- Post added July 29th, 2015 at 12:07 PM ----------

Sometimes getting a little water in your throat will cause you to continue to cough and feel like you're choking and not able to breathe... even though you are.

Ending the exercise in the pool isn't terrible. But in the real world you should continue to cough and breathe through the regulator until the coughing subsides. Think about it this way: if you are able to cough, you are breathing. You can't repeatedly cough air out if you aren't getting air into your lungs.

I do agree with everything - but I wasn't getting ANY air into my lungs. Think about the feeling of having no air in the bottle. Same thing. TSandM has written below what happened.

---------- Post added July 29th, 2015 at 12:09 PM ----------

I mean the person handing you the reg has their hand over the whole front of the reg, covering the purge valve. You can't purge the reg due to their hand, and have to rely on enough air in your lungs to purge the reg by blowing out before you breathe from the reg. If you don't have enough air left to purge the reg, you'll breathe some water on the first breath you take from their reg.

Very good point. I'll remember that. Thanks.

---------- Post added July 29th, 2015 at 12:18 PM ----------

Wait, what the heck was this exercise? A tired diver doesn't need to share air. A panicking diver doesn't need to share air. Were they supposed to be out of air and tired and panicking? Also on fire, perhaps?

Exercise 1: a diver is exhausted. You help him stop and calm down, until his breathing is normal.

Exercise 2: diver is exhausted. You help him stop and calm down, until his breathing is normal. Then you check his air and notice that while he was breathing so fast, he was almost out of air. You share air with him and both ascend.

Exercise 3: diver is exhausted. You help him stop and calm down, until his breathing is normal. Then you check his air and notice that while he was breathing so fast, he was almost out of air. When you try to share air, diver loses control, panicks, tries to surface.

4. .... no, we didn't reach the fire part ...

---------- Post added July 29th, 2015 at 12:37 PM ----------

Judicious use of the purge valve - that is, causing a manual (controlled) free-flow - will deliver more air than the diver can breathe. At this point it is imperative that the diver exercise "brain over body" and force the body to accept the fact that it's getting as much air as it could get on the surface, and reject the "bolt" response. It's also helpful to remember that at depth each breath is bringing in more oxygen than the same volume would at the surface, and again exercise brain over body, realizing that there's plenty of oxygen in each breath and there's no need to "pant" or panic.
It doesn't sound like you had a laryngospasm, but since that's come up, pay close attention to what Dr. TSandM says... and, I can add from personal experience, the first time it happens it will scare the livin' *&^(% out of the diver. If that happens, the diver must *really* force calmness and try to breathe gently and slowly; eventually the spasm will allow some inhalation, and, as I mentioned earlier, every little bit of air the diver can get in at depth carries more oxygen than at the surface, so "stay calm, and stay put."

Rick
--
Addendum - additional info - breathing patterns and anxiety/panic:
A common problem sequence at depth has to do with a combination of the body's blood oxygen level measurement mechanism and the density of the breathing gas. Because the air is denser at depth than at the surface, the same breathing effort and timing used on the surface will tend to result in a shallower breath, and though that'll generally deliver plenty of oxygen, it will be less efficient at off-gassing carbon dioxide, resulting in a higher blood CO2 level than normal.
The body, rather than measuring its oxygen status directly, uses blood CO2 levels to calculate oxygen saturation indirectly. So, a higher CO2 level will result in a feeling that the diver's not getting enough air, and absent any conscious intervention, the body will attempt to breathe faster. This attempt is generally counter-productive, because with increased density, airflow resistance increases greatly with the speed of the gas moving through any restriction (the trachea, bronchi, broncioles etc), and all that happens is that the diver breathes faster but even shallower than before, with even poorer CO2 off-gassing, climbing CO2 blood levels, an even more intense feeling of "not enough air" and so on until the diver is in full panic mode.
The solution is once again "brain over body," taking over the breathing pattern from the body's natural "breathe faster" feeling to "Ok, feeling like I'm a little short of breath here, I need to breath slowly and deeply, and exhale fully to get that CO2 level back down, 'cause I know I'm getting plenty of oxygen and my problem isn't a shortage of oxygen but rather poor off-gassing of CO2."

Thank you so. Very interesting, and usuful. I am pretty sure by now what happened with TSandM descriptions.

I will keep your teachings in mind, though. Thanks.

 

[The Chairman]

Diving a 1.5+ knot current yesterday on the Duane, I turned my head on the down line to see if my buddy bailed (she doesn't like currents) and the water caught the exhaust valve just right and I inspired a lot of salt water. Immediately, I had a laryngospasm and thought I was going to die. By the time I recovered, I looked back and saw that my buddy had bailed, so I went to plan B. So, you can recover at depth, but it's tough. I was still trying to clear my airway for the next five minutes or so and it turned out to be an awesome dive!

 

[The Laconic]

Exercise 3: diver is exhausted. You help him stop and calm down, until his breathing is normal. Then you check his air and notice that while he was breathing so fast, he was almost out of air. When you try to share air, diver loses control, panicks, tries to surface.

OK, that actually sounds like a good exercise: arrest a determined descent into the incident pit.