Paraplegics and Diving

[BrokenT10]

Okay since a lot of people get on here looking for information about getting their friends back into the water and initially look to groups like HSA and IHDA, I have to say that as a paraplegic diver, I have been disenchanted with these groups. HSA's website was confusing and trying to find an instructor was difficult when I was looking about three years ago. When I did find an instructor, they had never instructed anyone with a disability and I didnt want to be their monkey.
I got ceritified with an able bodied friend and he doesnt need HSA buddy diver status to be my buddy or any of the other people I've dove with. Just tell them what to expect and how they can help. I found an instructor I was comfortable with and went diving. I am an SSI Master Diver having been through the stress and rescue course and met the qualifications and performed the physical aspects quite well by just adapting what I needed to do. Granted, I'm not swimming someone a half mile back to the beach while giving them mouth to mouth.
So my point is this, find an instructor who is willing to work with you, makes you comfortable and then go for it. Everyone will help you along the way from getting into your gear to helping you back into the chair. I'm a t-10 para, hence my name, and I have first hand experience diving from cold quarries in Ohio to the St Lawrence to FLorida and the Dominican Republic.
Questions about gear configeration, what I dive or how I do it give me a shout.

 

[Tim_in_Qatar]

Hi,
We have a member who is about to return to us from Australia following his rehab after a motorbike accident. He is paprplegic as a result and we have set up a working group in our club to get him back into the swing of things. We don't have a problem on the dry side, we are making plans for the necessary ramps and such for the clubhouse and to get him onto the boat. BUT - how to get him out of the water! We use a RIB, which will be fairly easy - we'll just use his harness and drag him aboard (his instructions!), but we also use a hardboat for the more interesting diving further offshore. This is one of the member's boats and at 36' is not big enough to fit a bespoke lift. I was trying to think of ways of using the anchor windlass as the muscle and some sort of hammock rigged on a line(s) running from fore to aft to raise him to the level of the gunwhale. Other than that it will be parbucling - which isn't very dignified! Any other schemes you might have seen or used?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Tim

 

[BrokenT10]

My usual approach is to get to the boat and take off my gear, hand up my tank and BC plus any other gear I'm wearing. Be sure to take off the weight belt, put some air in the dry suit or make sure he has some other bouyance factor, such as the wet suit. Once I'm free from the gear it is easier to move around. I do this for the zodiac type boats also and as there is usually two guys around, they both get in the boat and I put my back to the boat, they grab under my arms and lift me in.
On a larger boat with no swim platform, my suggestion is to wear an extra weight belt with no weight so you have something to grab ahold of. I would pull myself up as far as I can and have some guys drag me over the side. Once they have me over the side I try to turn into a sitting position and from there its a two person carry to the chair.
If you have a ladder for getting into the boat, I have pulled myself up the ladder with my buddy using his arm under my butt for support. Once I get up high enough, someone pulls me in and I turn to a sitting position and get back into the chair. The place I normally dive (Gilboa Quarry, Gilboa, Ohio) uses platforms with stairs, I will take off my gear and then climb the stairs in the sitting position. Once I get to the top, I brace my feet against the railing and pull myself up into a crouch or squatting position and then transfer into the chair. I need to get this all on video someday.
I once walked down a gangplank on my hands while someone walked backwards holding my legs because the gangplank wasn't wide eouhg for my chair. Once I was on the boat, I sat on a bencha dn then got into my chair.
Good luck with the diving. I did some free diving for pearls in Bahrain a few years back. It was a lot of fun.

 

[pasley]

.... When I did find an instructor, they had never instructed anyone with a disability and I didn't want to be their monkey....

I can understand not wanting to be the first. BUT as an HSA Instructor he was already a certified Instructor who received an additional three days of training including pool and ocean sessions on how to train divers with disabilities. Three very long days I might add. Someone has to be a new instructors (and these instructors are usually not new when they come to HSA) first student. While some training sessions do have handicapped divers there to help with the training, it is not possible for all to have an actual handicapped person to train on at the training. This is both a function of shortage of handicapped diver volunteers and safety factors. But HSA makes good use of role playing and rope to provide each trainee with both a simulated handicapped person (paraplegic, then quadriplegic and later a blind diver) and an opportunity to get some feel for the challenges of executing the skills without the use of your legs or eyes by having each applicant do the skills with their feet tied and later with the black skirted mask and lots of duct tape over the lens. Would it be better if each applicant had an actual disabled person there? Undoubtedly. But getting paraplegic, quadriplegic and blind diver to attend each training session (keeping in mind HSA is non-profit and so they would have to do so for free) for each applicant to have a training aid for the 7 hours of the pool session is challenging. So they use role playing. This incidentally provides some very good training both for the trainee and the trainee role player and gives them a fairly good opportunity to get some experience. Now that you are diving, you might consider helping out and volunteering to work with the instructor to help further train him/her or to keep an eye out for the next training session near you and help there.

.... I got certified with an able bodied friend and he doesn't need HSA buddy diver status to be my buddy or any of the other people I've dove with... .

On this point I would disagree. Can he be your dive buddy without the training? Certainly. But could he be a better prepared divebuddy on day one if he had received training? I would say yes. He would also be trained to assist a wide range of handicapped divers, not just a T10 (by the way are you a complete or incomplete?). He would receive training on the various disabilities, pressure sores, and adaptive techniques to use, including how to help get you into or out of the boat. I know you have a techniques and it works. There are often many solutions to a problem. The HSA technique works and is designed to minimize risk of injury to both the diver and the people helping. One of the main points of HSA is that each person is different and that you must adapt to meet the individual challenge. There training is only designed to provide an arsenal of tools to use based upon the sum total of experience gained since 1981. That can't be all bad, and does save some (not all) of the learning by trial and error.

The most important thing here though is that you are diving safely and having fun.

The current HSA website is not bad, and continues to evolve.

 

[BrokenT10]

I am a T-10 complete and while HSA plays an interesting role, I havent seen it have much effect for me or the divers around me. My dive buddy, who I have more than 100 dives with, also assists other divers who are paras and he is pretty good at doing it without all that training. From my experience, HSA has done more for training able body divers than actual handicap divers. My experience only! If someone wants to go through the training by all means but I am saying that a person doesnt need that training as long as they are willing to communicate with the diver. I have never dove with an HSA trained instructor or diver in all the places I have dove around the country and in foreign ports. Most are just willing to help and learn.
The instructor I had had never taught a disability even though she was an HSA instructor and she had no clue as to what I could or couldnt do in the water even with her training. As for getting in and out of the boat, that something you figure out on your own. I've dove from zodiacs, pontoons, big platform dive boats, boats with four foot ladders to get back on board and each requires something different that cant be taught by anyone. Its trial and error and as a para, I'm definitly an authority on how to get it done.
I've also been to several HSA events where I was the only handicapped person there.