My Wifes IPE in Cozumel

[Griffo]

Firstly for those unfamiliar with Immersion Pulmonary Edema's:
Immersion Pulmonary Edema | The Heart & Diving - DAN Health & Diving
Immersion Pulmonary Oedema - UKDMC
This is both mine and my wife’s perspective of an IPE event. Ask away if you have any questions after my novel below. We have the medical discharge for any detailed medical questions.

Background Stuff:
I’m 41 and my wife is 40. We both could afford to lose a couple of kilos’, but we don’t lead a sedentary life. My wifes health is fine, she was not on any medications, her blood pressure is great (if anything on the low side), there's no family history on either side of any heart issues.

While the last 6 months we would admit to being in a lazy phase, we’ve generally kept fit through cycling, running, or HIIT style gym workouts. Ergo, we didn’t go into this holiday at the peak of our fitness, but we also aren’t a couple of couch potatoes. We dive in pretty much matching GUE/DIR compliant single tank setups. Both our regs were sent for service at a reputable tech shop shortly before the trip. I actually used the wife’s regs the week before and it breathed so well I teased her about stealing them (she has an Aqualung setup, mines Apeks).

The night before the dive we discovered that the main button on my wife’s dive computer was not working, so we had to borrow a shop computer. This is really a side point, but I note it because this computer had a once per minute recording interval and I had to go and buy a $100 USD cable to get the data off it (the dive op didn’t have a cable to take data off their own computers…). So the logs aren’t very detailed.

My wife hit her 100th dive while on Coz. Probably 90 of these have been in the last 8 years.

We were on day three of our Coz stay. The previous week we’d done the Blue Hole plus another couple of dives in Belize, and before we left home we did a couple of local dives, so we had shaken out the cobwebs.

Unluckily between Belize and Coz, I came down with a head cold but thought I was all cleared up for the first days diving when we arrived in Coz. Turns out I wasn’t - I had real issues with sinus squeeze and took a long time to get down on both dives. We skipped day 2 to try to give my sinus more time to clear. I mention this simply to explain that the DM was probably expecting us to be above and behind him during the first part of the dive as we were for those two dives. I also assume we came across as self-sufficient divers as on the previous dives the DM indicated for us to ascend on our own and leave the group when we hit reserve pressure first (we had smaller cylinders on day 1).

 

[Griffo]

My Recollection:
The dive of topic was the first dive on day 3 and started like any other. We were on EAN 33%, and I had a HP120 while Liss had a HP100. Water temp was 25C, we were both in almost new 5mm Bare wetsuits bought for the trip.

The group consisted of the DM, Liss and I, Jim and Mo, and another diver who’s name I currently forget (lovely guy from California - sorry!). We’d dived with the same group 2 days before, everyone seemed to be highly competent and experienced divers.

We’d motored in the boat to one of the most southern dive sites, and on arrival, the DM asked us to do a negative entry due to possible currents. Obviously, I wasn’t planning on crashing down to depth with potential sinus issues so I reminded the DM that I might be slow coming down.

I was able to descend without much issue, but I noticed Liss was having trouble clearing. She was quite slow descending and indicated to her ears. Not a huge issue, it happens sometimes, so I hung a couple of meters below her while she continued to try to clear. At this stage it was obvious that we’d been dropped well away from any reef, all we could see was sand in every direction. There was little to no current, although some appeared towards the end of the dive (against us). Vis was maybe 50m or more, the sand was I’d guess at 40-45m or so, and we could see that easily. The DM was swimming off into the distance, so we followed behind him and the group. They’d descended deep and were swimming at I’d guess 25m+. I initially followed them down somewhat, sitting between the group and Liss. At 5 minutes into the dive, I was around 23m and the wife at 19m and behind me. We were dropping back a little from the group, so I pulled out the can light and tried to signal them to slow down a bit, but I was unable to get anyone’s attention.
Liss and I were both in Hollis F2’s which are great as they are light and stiff and pack well, but certainly are not the most powerful of fins. We watched as the other divers disappeared into the distance leaving us behind, but we kept swimming in the same direction. I tried signaling them again just before they disappeared but no luck. At around the 10min mark I’ve signaled to the wife that this is crazy – she responded in agreement. We still couldn’t see anything but sand, they had gone off into the distance, so I suggested we level up a few meters and keep swimming. Why blow through so much gas at such a deep depth right? So, we came up to about 15m or so and kept on finning. I checked with the wife a few times, she continued to give me the OK signal, but I could tell that she was moderating her pace. I didn’t think anything strange about that, I was a bit exerted myself. Not puffed, but getting there. It was a long swim.

Around the 15min mark I considered abandoning the dive - I hadn’t signed up for a blue-water ocean swim! In hindsight I should have, but again I checked with the wife, she OK’d and we kept going.

Around the 20 minute mark I got the first glimpse of the group. One of them (Jim I think) was shining a light as they sat at the edge of the reef waiting for us. I’m told that they had actually called the dive and were about to ascend when they caught sight of us, and thus decided to continue. I saw the DM then turn around and swim off. He didn’t wait for us to actually catch up, he just took off again. I started to descend (I got to 28m, the wife was a bit behind me at 23m) and turned around to check with the wife. This was when she gave the first sign that everything was not OK.

Liss has never thumbed a dive ever unless she was on fumes, but she gave me the thumb signal quite vigorously. I confirmed, then turned around and let one of the divers (Jim) know we were going up and to try to let the DM know. He signaled OK and I immediately started ascending to catch up with the wife, who was on her way up without me (again, not normal). While ascending I took out the SMB and got that sucker up faster than I’ve ever done so in my life. I’d ascended from 28m to 15m where I caught up with the wife. My log says I did that in 1.5 minutes. When I caught up with the wife, she was obviously distressed. At this stage I thought she was just out-of-breath and maybe over-breathing the reg, maybe a CO2 hit. So while we controlled our ascent to align with how fast I was wrapping the SMB reel, we continued going up pretty fast. We got to the 5m mark in another 1.5 minutes. I asked the wife if she wanted to do a stop and she vigorously indicated no, so we blew the stop and hit the surface.

On the surface, the level of Liss’s distress was evident. She was breathing rapidly and wheezing and saying she “couldn’t breathe”. I told her to make sure her BC was fully inflated and to put her reg back in as I swam the short distance to physically grab her.

The boat was very close, and the boat captain asked if everything was OK. My loud “NO” sprung him into action and he had the boat next to us in seconds and ran to get the ladder down etc. Liss kept saying she couldn’t breathe, so I started to remove her gear ready to get her up the ladder. The boat captain had also removed a side from the boat to give us an alternate entry point but we went for the ladder. I managed to get the wife out of her gear while holding her. The first attempt to push her up the ladder failed as I’d forgotten her fins in my haste, but after removing them, the captain helped drag her onto the boat as I pushed her up the ladder. Liss was obviously unable to climb the ladder under her own steam. At this stage Liss leant and vomited over the side of the boat and for the first time (I think) started coughing badly in between wheezing breaths.

I got myself onto the boat and got out of my gear as quick as possible. By the time I’d done that the captain had an O2 setup going. The first mask seemed to fall apart or had some other issue but he had a second luckily. I checked that he had it cranked up to over 30lpm and tried to assist my wife. She was still unable to get a proper breath and started now to cough up pink frothy sputum. She looked very pale but not blue. All I could do was to unzip and remove the top half of her wetsuit to try to make her more comfortable.

The boat captain by now was making the emergency signal with the engine. Not long after that the DM’s SMB hit the surface and we motored closer. The captain kept making the emergency signal but it seemed like forever until the other divers surfaced. I was subsequently told that despite the captain making the emergency signal, the group completed a safety stop as normal. During this time the wife did not seem to be making any improvement, she continued to cough significant amounts of pink sputum and I could hear her lungs crackling just by sitting next to her. I tried getting her to lie down but she was most comfortable sitting up. (I’ve since read that the latest advice for IPE is to sit up)

Once the other divers surfaced I may have yelled at them to hurry up please. Nicely of course.. The DM was last on boat and I told him I suspected an IPE and we needed to go to hospital like NOW. He just nodded, spoke to the captain who then radioed in while the DM went and got on his phone. There’s not much else he could do obviously. As soon as the captain finished his radio call we took off quickly. In between checking on the wife I tried to get us as ready as possible to leave the boat immediately on landing. Big thanks to Jim and Mo and Joran(?) for helping.

That sure was a long 10 minute boat ride, but we landed at Palancar (?) beach club where an ambulance was waiting. Because there was a distance of sand between the ambo and dock, the first responders asked her to walk from the boat, which she struggled to do. She was obviously very weak, so they got her to sit down at the end of the dock. They took her BP, listened to her lungs etc, and put her back on O2. They then assisted her into the ambulance. The ride seemed to take forever till we got to the International Hospital.

At the hospital they kept asking her if she held her breath, which she denied time and again. I guess it’s part of the normal process, but she could barely breath let alone talk. They took the dive stats from me from the computer, I had to give them stats from mine as we’d left her loaner on the boat. Despite what I and Liss told them, they still reported on the official discharge that she panicked and had an uncontrolled ascent, neither of which were true, but anyway maybe lost in translation…

The doctor in charge let me know they believed it was an IPE and they put in an IV line, took bloods and gave her diuretics. They measured her O2 saturation at 80% when off the O2 mask, I assume she was probably much lower when we first surfaced (this was about an hour after surfacing).

It took probably 6 hours before she indicated that she was feeling some improvement in ease of breath. They kept her in for 24 hours, by which time she was able to keep her O2 level up without O2. She became a study subject with the head doctor doing a heart cardio showing about 6 other doctors what he was looking for.

On release, at least from my perspective, she was still pretty weak and got tired even on our slow 5 minute walk back to our unit. I think it took her 4-5 days to get close to normal.

 

[Griffo]

Her Recollection of the dive
I was excited for the dive and feeling relaxed and great. We had skipped the previous day due to John’s sinus issues on Day 1 but I had thoroughly enjoyed that first day and was ready to get back into it.

We were completing a negative entry so I started to descend immediately but soon realized one of my ears was going to be stubborn to equalize. I let John know and slowed my descent rate – this wasn’t out of the ordinary for us as I tend to be a slow equalizer on most dives. John slowed his rate too and stayed within 3M of my depth below me. We just started to follow the DM and other divers who were already down to about ~30M while I slowly descended. While the ear sorted quite quickly, by the time we reached ~25m depth we were a fair way behind the group and it was clear the dive site wasn’t below us – nothing but sand and blue to be seen. We were finning constantly and while I don’t generally love finning through blue, I wasn’t overly concerned as I knew we would likely catch the group up when we reached the reef. However we soon lost the group completely and after 10 mins of finning with no sign of them or of the reef, I was getting frustrated at the dive and a little concerned. I also realized at this point that I was feeling tired, quite puffed and breathing heavily. Knowing that over exertion isn’t ideal, I consciously slowed my breath to recover and backed off my finning effort, breathing in for 3 and out for 3. John realized I had slowed down and he slowed with me – at this point I felt calm again and was breathing easily and we then continued to fin.

From here, within the next few minutes my breathing had once again increased and I immediately felt completely out of breath again even though my physical exertion hadn’t really increased a lot. I found it strange to be so puffed and started to feel a bit stressed when I couldn’t recover my breath. I was 100% concentrating on my breathing at this point, coaching myself to slow my rate, without success – I just seemed to become more and more out of breath even though I was barely finning at this point. I was aware what was happening with the group at the same time – we came into contact again when the reef appeared and they saw us and continued ahead. John was starting to descend to join them but I started to feel panicked that my breathing was getting worse not better – I did think that perhaps this was a panic attack I was having?? Although I didn’t feel out of control – just really out of breath. I realized that whatever was happening with me, I needed to ascend to recover and urgently signed to John that I wanted to thumb the dive. He acknowledged immediately and I started to ascend. I was feeling pretty panicked at this point because I was still at 20m deep and my breathing was becoming harder and faster. Not sure why exactly, but I did have trouble starting my ascent – I felt like I was stuck at 20m and couldn’t rise. This panicked me further but I just kept telling myself to breath in, breath out… I did start to ascend and John quickly caught up with me and blew the SMB – we slowed a little to align with his speed of reeling but kept ascending. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to handle any additional task myself like blowing an SMB. All I could focus on was getting to the surface to breath properly and to just keep gasping the air until I was there. I was incredibly panicked by this point but Thank God the training stayed with me and I didn’t think of doing anything stupid (eg. Pulling out my reg, kicking for the surface etc..). I didn’t take on any water, I know this for sure but I was breathing really hard and fast and felt like I was barely getting any air.

When we reached 6M John indicated a safety stop – I did think about it for a second but realized there was no way I could do it – I urgently indicated no and kept ascending.

As soon as we reached the surface, I inflated and ripped out my regulator to breath. The relief was intense that I had made it to the surface, however immediately I realized there was no improvement to the quality of “air”. I definitely panicked even more when I realized this and can just remember sucking breath as hard as I could and saying over and over “I can’t breathe”. John has described the rest in detail – I was so weak at this point all I could do was cling to the side of the boat and I do think I was close to passing out. I wouldn’t have been able to get out of my gear or on the boat without help – luckily my husband is incredible in stressful situations and was super calm in organizing everything.

When I got on the boat I definitely puked my breakfast – I think from stress – and then just had to keep trying to clear my lungs by coughing. After I did that and had the oxygen for a few minutes sitting up I started to breathe a little easier but I did not feel like I was really getting enough air or any relief until we were almost at the dock with the ambulance (maybe 10-15 mins boat ride after the other divers surfaced?). The responders helped me off the boat – I could walk with assistance but I didn’t make it more than 4 metres without having to sit down and suck the oxygen again. Making it another 5 metres to the Ambulance was torture – I honestly felt so weak, my legs or arms just wouldn’t work.

During the ambulance ride they asked me plenty of questions but it was so hard to breathe and speak that I didn’t respond a lot. Same in the hospital – it was really hard to answer any questions as breathing took all my conscious effort (even with the O2). It probably took about 6 hours before I had any relief and could more easily breathe, but I couldn’t take a proper deep breathe again until 24 hours later.

When I was released from the hospital it was surprising how puffed I was with the slightest effort – I had to walk at the speed of molasses and take breaks every few steps to climb a staircase. This improved over the first few days but probably took a week before I felt “normal” again.

It was a really scary experience to state the obvious!

Summary
DAN were freaking amazing! They guaranteed payment to the hospital within a couple of hours, while my other travel insurance is still thinking about it and asking for forms weeks later. Thanks to DAN we left the hospital without paying a cent. They made about 4 calls to us during the hospital stay and have also called as follow up after she was released and sent check in emails as well.

My Thoughts:

• Rescue courses should be mandatory. Everything I did to assist Liss out of the water and onto the boat was due to having done the Stress and Rescue course with a conscientious instructor. I might even go and re-do it with the wife (assuming she’s allowed to dive again)
• Always take your buddies thumbing a dive seriously. I knew my wife would never thumb a dive unless it was serious, but I’m sure an insta-buddy might not have taken it as seriously.
• Good underwater communication helped. We communicate well and often (or at least look at the other diver frequently), so I knew fairly quickly and Liss didn’t have to spend long getting my attention
• If I ever consider thumbing a dive again in the future, I’m just going to do it. I should have trusted my gut. A 22minute swim to a dive site was just stupid, and even without the IPE event, I’d blown half my gas in a HP120 just getting to the site. If we’d thumbed it at the 10 minute mark we may have avoided the whole event (maybe… who knows)
• Practice skills like SMB blowing and ascending together on every dive. It helped when under a rush / stress. If she’d passed out on the way up I was close enough to grab her.
• Make sure the boats emergency signal and how it is to be handled is discussed pre-dive. It wasn’t during any of our briefings.
• DAN insurance is worth every cent.
• I wonder if the fact we were on 33% EAN had any positive effect in keeping Liss’s O2 levels high enough to remain conscious.
• The boat captain was amazing and reacted exactly as I would have hoped in an emergency
• Cozumel International Hospital is excellent – clearly they know what they are doing with dive medicine and we felt in good hands from minute 1 to release

 

[CuzzA]

My Recollection:
The dive of topic was the first dive on day 3 and started like any other. We were on EAN 33%, and I had a HP120 while Liss had a HP100. Water temp was 25C, we were both in almost new 5mm Bare wetsuits bought for the trip.

The group consisted of the DM, Liss and I, Jim and Mo, and another diver who’s name I currently forget (lovely guy from California - sorry!). We’d dived with the same group 2 days before, everyone seemed to be highly competent and experienced divers.

We’d motored in the boat to one of the most southern dive sites, and on arrival, the DM asked us to do a negative entry due to possible currents. Obviously, I wasn’t planning on crashing down to depth with potential sinus issues so I reminded the DM that I might be slow coming down.

I was able to descend without much issue, but I noticed Liss was having trouble clearing. She was quite slow descending and indicated to her ears. Not a huge issue, it happens sometimes, so I hung a couple of meters below her while she continued to try to clear. At this stage it was obvious that we’d been dropped well away from any reef, all we could see was sand in every direction. There was little to no current, although some appeared towards the end of the dive (against us). Vis was maybe 50m or more, the sand was I’d guess at 40-45m or so, and we could see that easily. The DM was swimming off into the distance, so we followed behind him and the group. They’d descended deep and were swimming at I’d guess 25m+. I initially followed them down somewhat, sitting between the group and Liss. At 5 minutes into the dive, I was around 23m and the wife at 19m and behind me. We were dropping back a little from the group, so I pulled out the can light and tried to signal them to slow down a bit, but I was unable to get anyone’s attention.
Liss and I were both in Hollis F2’s which are great as they are light and stiff and pack well, but certainly are not the most powerful of fins. We watched as the other divers disappeared into the distance leaving us behind, but we kept swimming in the same direction. I tried signaling them again just before they disappeared but no luck. At around the 10min mark I’ve signaled to the wife that this is crazy – she responded in agreement. We still couldn’t see anything but sand, they had gone off into the distance, so I suggested we level up a few meters and keep swimming. Why blow through so much gas at such a deep depth right? So, we came up to about 15m or so and kept on finning. I checked with the wife a few times, she continued to give me the OK signal, but I could tell that she was moderating her pace. I didn’t think anything strange about that, I was a bit exerted myself. Not puffed, but getting there. It was a long swim.

Around the 15min mark I considered abandoning the dive - I hadn’t signed up for a blue-water ocean swim! In hindsight I should have, but again I checked with the wife, she OK’d and we kept going.

Around the 20 minute mark I got the first glimpse of the group. One of them (Jim I think) was shining a light as they sat at the edge of the reef waiting for us. I’m told that they had actually called the dive and were about to ascend when they caught sight of us, and thus decided to continue. I saw the DM then turn around and swim off. He didn’t wait for us to actually catch up, he just took off again. I started to descend (I got to 28m, the wife was a bit behind me at 23m) and turned around to check with the wife. This was when she gave the first sign that everything was not OK.

Liss has never thumbed a dive ever unless she was on fumes, but she gave me the thumb signal quite vigorously. I confirmed, then turned around and let one of the divers (Jim) know we were going up and to try to let the DM know. He signaled OK and I immediately started ascending to catch up with the wife, who was on her way up without me (again, not normal). While ascending I took out the SMB and got that sucker up faster than I’ve ever done so in my life. I’d ascended from 28m to 15m where I caught up with the wife. My log says I did that in 1.5 minutes. When I caught up with the wife, she was obviously distressed. At this stage I thought she was just out-of-breath and maybe over-breathing the reg, maybe a CO2 hit. So while we controlled our ascent to align with how fast I was wrapping the SMB reel, we continued going up pretty fast. We got to the 5m mark in another 1.5 minutes. I asked the wife if she wanted to do a stop and she vigorously indicated no, so we blew the stop and hit the surface.

On the surface, the level of Liss’s distress was evident. She was breathing rapidly and wheezing and saying she “couldn’t breathe”. I told her to make sure her BC was fully inflated and to put her reg back in as I swam the short distance to physically grab her.

The boat was very close, and the boat captain asked if everything was OK. My loud “NO” sprung him into action and he had the boat next to us in seconds and ran to get the ladder down etc. Liss kept saying she couldn’t breathe, so I started to remove her gear ready to get her up the ladder. The boat captain had also removed a side from the boat to give us an alternate entry point but we went for the ladder. I managed to get the wife out of her gear while holding her. The first attempt to push her up the ladder failed as I’d forgotten her fins in my haste, but after removing them, the captain helped drag her onto the boat as I pushed her up the ladder. Liss was obviously unable to climb the ladder under her own steam. At this stage Liss leant and vomited over the side of the boat and for the first time (I think) started coughing badly in between wheezing breaths.

I got myself onto the boat and got out of my gear as quick as possible. By the time I’d done that the captain had an O2 setup going. The first mask seemed to fall apart or had some other issue but he had a second luckily. I checked that he had it cranked up to over 30lpm and tried to assist my wife. She was still unable to get a proper breath and started now to cough up pink frothy sputum. She looked very pale but not blue. All I could do was to unzip and remove the top half of her wetsuit to try to make her more comfortable.

The boat captain by now was making the emergency signal with the engine. Not long after that the DM’s SMB hit the surface and we motored closer. The captain kept making the emergency signal but it seemed like forever until the other divers surfaced. I was subsequently told that despite the captain making the emergency signal, the group completed a safety stop as normal. During this time the wife did not seem to be making any improvement, she continued to cough significant amounts of pink sputum and I could hear her lungs crackling just by sitting next to her. I tried getting her to lie down but she was most comfortable sitting up. (I’ve since read that the latest advice for IPE is to sit up)

Once the other divers surfaced I may have yelled at them to hurry up please. Nicely of course.. The DM was last on boat and I told him I suspected an IPE and we needed to go to hospital like NOW. He just nodded, spoke to the captain who then radioed in while the DM went and got on his phone. There’s not much else he could do obviously. As soon as the captain finished his radio call we took off quickly. In between checking on the wife I tried to get us as ready as possible to leave the boat immediately on landing. Big thanks to Jim and Mo and Joran(?) for helping.

That sure was a long 10 minute boat ride, but we landed at Palancar (?) beach club where an ambulance was waiting. Because there was a distance of sand between the ambo and dock, the first responders asked her to walk from the boat, which she struggled to do. She was obviously very weak, so they got her to sit down at the end of the dock. They took her BP, listened to her lungs etc, and put her back on O2. They then assisted her into the ambulance. The ride seemed to take forever till we got to the International Hospital.

At the hospital they kept asking her if she held her breath, which she denied time and again. I guess it’s part of the normal process, but she could barely breath let alone talk. They took the dive stats from me from the computer, I had to give them stats from mine as we’d left her loaner on the boat. Despite what I and Liss told them, they still reported on the official discharge that she panicked and had an uncontrolled ascent, neither of which were true, but anyway maybe lost in translation…

The doctor in charge let me know they believed it was an IPE and they put in an IV line, took bloods and gave her diuretics. They measured her O2 saturation at 80% when off the O2 mask, I assume she was probably much lower when we first surfaced (this was about an hour after surfacing).

It took probably 6 hours before she indicated that she was feeling some improvement in ease of breath. They kept her in for 24 hours, by which time she was able to keep her O2 level up without O2. She became a study subject with the head doctor doing a heart cardio showing about 6 other doctors what he was looking for.

On release, at least from my perspective, she was still pretty weak and got tired even on our slow 5 minute walk back to our unit. I think it took her 4-5 days to get close to normal.

Thanks for sharing. Glad to hear she recovered and hopefully she can dive again some day if she still wants to. I'm sure it was a pretty traumatic experience and you felt pretty helpless once back on the boat. I don't see anywhere to place any blame or even question any actions. Just bad luck.

I'm curious if DAN was ever called and got involved and/or if they covered any expense?

 

[Griffo]

Thanks for sharing. Glad to hear she recovered and hopefully she can dive again some day if she still wants to. I'm sure it was a pretty traumatic experience and you felt pretty helpless once back on the boat. I don't see anywhere to place any blame or even question any actions. Just bad luck.

I'm curious if DAN was ever called and got involved and/or if they covered any expense?

Yep ****** luck. I'm suprised that when the DM realised we were 20+ mins away from the reef he didn't just get us back on the boat to re-position.. and ignoring the emergency call grates me.

As to DAN - yes, end of the very long winded report. They were absolutely fantastic, they guaranteed payment, they reviewed her medical records and treatment etc while she was still in hospital, and follow up so many times with us it almost got annoying

 

[Diver below 83]

Wow that’s a crazy story, thank you for sharing and glad your wife is doing better. I’ve only done 2 boat dives and was never told about an emergency engine signal. What is that typically sound wise?

 

[Steelyeyes]

Very well written description. I'm glad everything worked out for the best.

 

[CuzzA]

Yep ****** luck. I'm suprised that when the DM realised we were 20+ mins away from the reef he didn't just get us back on the boat to re-position.. and ignoring the emergency call grates me.

As to DAN - yes, end of the very long winded report. They were absolutely fantastic, they guaranteed payment, they reviewed her medical records and treatment etc while she was still in hospital, and follow up so many times with us it almost got annoying

Indeed, he probably thought since he saw you, that you would catch up, and had she not got IPE, you probably would have had a dive like any other, but he certainly should have blew off the safety stop once he heard the emergency recall signal.

Great to hear about DAN. It's funny, my plan is up at the end of the month and today I was considering skipping it given that most of my diving is local and my health insurance would cover me in the states, minus the deductible and co-insurance, but I do travel sometimes and for how cheap it is, I think your thread re-convinced me to renew.

What's the prognosis on the wife diving again?

 

[Steelyeyes]

Wow that’s a crazy story, thank you for sharing and glad your wife is doing better. I’ve only done 2 boat dives and was never told about an emergency engine signal. What is that typically sound wise?

The only one I've heard is banging the ladder with something like a weight.

 

[Griffo]

What's the prognosis on the wife diving again?

Depends on who you ask. The discharge papers say she could dive again after 2 weeks so she's going with that . We'll get a full cardiac assessment done first though.