I made 2 big mistakes!!! thank god it was in a Pool... I think!

[ItsBruce]

While TSandM's posts are usually the best on any given topic, I think ae3753's post may top hers! (Though I do seem to recall TSandM having said about the same thing elsewhere.) Re-read it.

Once you are sharing air, the emergency is over. Then, all you have is an inconvenience. (I learned this formulation from TSandM.) Inconvenient, though it may be, get your buddy's attention, in any manner reasonably necessary; stop, solve the cramp, then continue.

I will not repeat the good comments on the ascent. However, if you want to see how your computer addresses ascent rate, do it without scuba. Take the computer and a deep breath at the surface; dive and then ascend. At pool depths you will become waterlogged long before you will get enough nitrogen loading to take a DCS hit, so a fast ascent is no big deal relative to deco obligations. An embolism is a different story and can happen in just a few feet. That is because you are putting pressurized air into your lungs and then going into lower pressure. Your lungs expand. However, if you take a breath of air at the surface, dive and ascend, your lungs will compress on the way down and then return on the way up. But, there will be no overexpansion. That is how you can watch your computer's reaction to a rapid ascent.

 

[wb5plj]

mostly all have good points here and could be of use to all. I have a few cents to add. yes I know I am chiming in late but I was fascinated with some lint I found in my belly button. (think forty-two)

In a real situation YOU need to save YOUR life without putting OTHERS in danger. This is another way of saying once your rescuer has you don't just follow his or her lead. This is not just a "one person leads and the other person follows" situation. you will have to work together. So I won't say you should or could "take control" of the dive during a rescue in the role of either party but you should also not sit there and assume that the other diver has all things under control, or is perfectly aware.

The rules of a buddy ascent, buddy breathing ascent, or other forms of rescue training are there to help you to learn the important points of the process. But as you found out, you cramped up, and your buddy had his attention on something else. Well that happens, take your hand off your inflator for a moment (this is breaking on of those rules) and tap on the face of his mask or head. and then attempt your communication. I prefer taping on the face of a divers mask like it is a fish bole. you don't need to be aggressive and it seams to work even if the other diver is fairly narked out.

I realize that you where in a pool but if you are in the real world and end up helping someone up from very deep depths you and the other diver may be under some minor narking, this greatly confuses the situation. it is much easier for say the other rescuing diver to become fixated on something else. such as looking up to the surface and not noticing a problem with you. there are all kinds of things that come up and make what you now have to do more difficult than when you practice it or do it alone.

I have had to help out people a couple of times and they all worked out alright but there where surprises and learning for involved parties each time. I won't bore you with two much but I will use one as example.

One instance we where diving in a Midwest cold water quarry (thick wetsuits and lots of led) about 110' and the other diver had an out of air situation. We had started out by heading over to where the wall was and along the way the other diver had the problem and went on my air. We communicated with each other and decided to ascend right there with no reference (by the way about 10' vis.)

Now the interesting thing here is that both of us had separately made a point of practicing controlled ascents with no reference and had done this allot. most of our diving is in very low vis and you can find yourself in open water without a reference very quickly. the wall may be 30' away but if you don't know which direction it might as well be a million. Of course we work hard to avoid it but it is just much more possible here. so it is one of those things we had practiced.

Once we started the ascent this became an elevator nightmare. It turns out that holding on to another diver while making your ascent without reference is quite difficult. We did a lot of elevator action from the 80'-120' for a few minuets, well more like seconds but it seamed to take hours. He is slightly faster than your are and slows just as you peddle faster now he is hanging on you so you try and not plummet and touch up some air to hold position. Wetsuits expanding changing buoyancy. He adds some air trying to fix the situation and you both are going to fast so you dump some air but one dumps it sooner and faster than the other and one of you hits the stop perfectly but the other one dumps much more air than needed to account for the other person lifting you and now as they came to a stop you are plummeting and yanking them down. blah blah blah...

So after getting it under control and heading up in a controlled manner we did a safety stop at 15' and it all started over again but this time from 15-25' or so. We got that back under control and then surfaced after the stop (yes we restarted counting)

Once back we where actually laughing about this but took it very seriously. Both of us where quite capable of no reference ascents done almost falsify but once we where holding on to one anthers BC's the little delay and difference and probably added some slightly slow response time due to depth and exposure it was a completely new game.

I don't know if that directly addresses your question other than to point out that yes sometimes other things (such as your cramp) are part of a rescue. but as there is no way to train for them the training focuses on the bits that you will have to manage but when the real thing comes along expect their to always be other related problems.


THE IMPORTANT BIT!!! READ THIS BIT!!! READ HERE!!!!
it also leads to this important bit. A fair number of people commented on the concerns for decompression whilst you where porpoising in the pool. They have valid comments and should be considered but I didn't see anyone talk of an embolism. This is another issue with diving and pressure. If it was not for this concern a diver in decompression could race up to his decompression stop depth with almost no regard for the speed that he did this at so long as he did make his stop.

The slow and controlled ascent rate must be maintained any time you are breathing compressed air. If you are at five feet you are breathing air that is compressed to that pressure and as you come up that air will expand! While you can dive for hours at five feet without encouraging a nitrogen penalty significant to cause decompression concerns (partly because it is under 2atm as your post theorized) you will have compressed gas in your tissues and that gas will expand as you come up. Keep in mind that this will also happen if you have been at five foot of depth for five minuets. When the gas expands out it could clump together into a bubble as opposed to being absorbed evenly into your tissues. This bubble is very similar to the ones talked about in nitrogen buildup but it is different in that we are not so concerned about it being in a muscle to between the tissues of a joint, though that would be bad. It could form in your heart or brain. The end result of this is or can be STROKE OR DEATH!

This seams to be a commonly forgotten concern of compressed gas diving, as everyone remembers about the partial pressure concerns of nitrogen etc... often newer divers forget that no mater what your nitrogen or other gas buildup you should never ascend to quickly. Some times it happens and you get lucky. I have lost it and "breached" to almost my waist before. So it happens and it can be survived just fine but please don't do this willingly. I had an ENT local to us whom works with divers a lot (he is a diver of course) found that most harmful embolisms formed in diving are formed in the last five feet! If you are wondering maybe why this is keep in mind that the shallower you get every foot of depth (either shallower or deeper) represents a far more significant pressure CHANGE than what the same foot of movement would represent at twice the depth. This is why you must equalize more often the more shallower you are.

In the first 30' or so you double the pressure on your body from 14 or so psi to over 28psi this is a 100% increase in pressure for 30' of depth and you are now at 2atm. As you go deeper the pressure continues to increase but you will not see that much percentage change in pressure occur again in any other 30' segment of your dive.

So be slow and easy with ascents where ever possible no mater how long you have been down and even more so when shallow.

I hope this has been helpful, stay safe, educate yourself, and have fun.

Why was your instructor not telling you to stop the bouncing? I don't know.....

 

[emttim]

Hello Guys,

I think I made the 2 biggest mistakes that a Diver can do, and I want to know what you think.
Ok let me start by the first mistake. We were doing the share air drill. I was the diver running out of air. So everything was fine and dandy until I started to get a cramp in my leg. We were already on the way up He had some air in his BC and so did I. We were at about 10' deep when I tried to tell my buddy that I was getting a cramp in my leg. He was not keeping Eye contact with me and was not reacting to my signals. While I did this I got the idea in my head that I was at depth of 60' and that I was really depending on this guy to get me to the surface. I tried getting control of my body and tried to stretch my legs so that the cramp would not get worst. But while I was doing that my buddy lost control of me. He was not reacting at all, so I just let go of him and signal up to the instructor and went up. When I got to the surface I informed the instructor that I had a cramp in my leg. Keep in mind that I had done the drill twice already before that one and my buddy actually did it better than me when it came to remembering the steps like never let go of the inflator hose or the regulator and stuff like that. Then we went down and did the drill 2 more time with no issues. But my question is on this one how do you deal with this situation at 60'? What do you do if everything goes south like in my case no air, cramps and non responsive rescuer? I know I cannot just fly to the surface like I did in the pool to relax the leg and stretch it.

And this brings me to my second mistake and question.
Like I said I was using my own equipment for the first time. So I wanted to try everything. At the end of the pool session I went to the deepest part of the pool because I wanted to see how the rate of ascent worked on the computer so I inflated the BS and went up like a bullet. It hit me on the way home what a stupid move that was. So to my question. Up to what depth is safe to just shoot up to the surface if you run into a major problem? In my head I am thinking one atmosphere or 33' but I am felling that answer is extremely wrong because of the nitro intake. I did this at the end of the class I started with 3000psi and went up the last time with 900psi. So why is it that nothing happened to me?
Like always thank you in advance for your help.

CC

First mistake can be corrected by replacing your buddy with a good one.

Second can be corrected by simply not doing it. I don't care if it's in a pool or not...that's a horrible habit to even go near developing. You never have a zero chance of getting DCS, or more possibly, an air embolism or lung overinflation injury from shooting to the surface. Therefore, it should never be done, even under controlled circumstances.

Unless of course you want an injury that may put you in a nursing home anyway. Improbable does not equal impossible.

 

[Phrenzy]

I'm glad you were able to learn from this situation. I have certainly had my share of those "Gee, I'll never do that again" moments. A smart person learns from their mistakes. A very smart person learns from others mistakes.

Thank you for giving those who read this to learn from your mistakes.

I am intrigued by the premise of your fast ascent experiment though. The next time you are around a pool with your scuba gear, you could simply tie a cord to your computer and toss it into the water. Then you could pull up on the cord to simulate different ascent speeds.

I have a hoseless computer, so it would simple for me. You might have other issues to contend with.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I've always found tha ttapping on the mask works well. Especially if you use a large metal object to do it. Like the butt of a rambo style dive knife! Seriously though. There is nothing wrong with tapping on their mask, cheek, or reg to get someone's attention. You are not supposed to be polite. This is an emergency. If they don't treat it like one get a different buddy.