what are your scuba battle scars..mental and physical

[SeaGurl]

I am back from Belize and am still in love with scuba diving. I loved everything about it EXCEPT getting back on the boat! I dreaded it.

I swear I would come back to the hotel with big honking bruises on my legs and arms from being tossed around like a rag doll when trying to get on the boat. Although it would give me a source of pride like I had really done something even though I only got beat up by a boat . I really hate those back platforms with the swinging ladders. I always think I'm gonna get conked over the head when approaching it.

I also can't shake the initial feeling when first descending of 'What the heck are you doing?! You can't breathe down here!' It passes quickly but I get the feeling that will never go away no matter how experienced I get.

Aside from decomp sickness ..what and where are your battle scars..be it from sea life or monster boats?

 

[tedtim]

Myself

I still have a nice 1 inch round blotch of skin that is healing from getting scraped across some rocks while helping my wife during a shore exit on our last vacation (February).

My wife

She is still wearing a wrist brace from when she broke her wrist on the same dive trip. She tripped on stairs on the way out of a dive site and landed on her wrist.

As for psychological scars....only memories of some of the buddies I dove with when I started out. Pushed it a bit beyond what we should have.

 

[Scottri]

I have a scare on the palm of my left hand from trying to remove a zip tie off of a mouthpiece with a very sharp dive knife. A lot of bumps and bruises over the years but no mental scars yet. I do have a lot of funny stories about other peoples trauma.

 

[Cacia]

I had a DM tell me we would not be hooking in because of the smokin' current, and then when some great shark action unfolded, he placed my hands on a wall, telling me to hang on. My hands got some weird burns that took two months to heal. I felt like I had aliens growing under the skin and it just kept sloughing off.

Mentally....My ego was badly bruised when I could not enter Chandelier Caves. I was last, and the entry looked like chocolate milk. The thought of eight people already in there floundering around just made me nuts. I tried like three times, and each time I got to the small entry and sorta froze. Of course all the new "oblivious" divers had no problem.

1) lost at night leading a dive
2) sharks swimming "at" me because the DM was squeaking a plastic bottle and thought it was hilarious to point at me when they spun around.
3) various mental field trips that were uncomfortable on stops in poor viz

My list of mental traumas go on and on....

 

[Misplaced Priority]

Well I had a life threatening incident (or at least felt life threatening) this past April when a gentleman who was on the dive boat off of the cruise ship did not secure his tank to his bc and when he stood up the tank slid through the strap and landed squarely on the toes of my right foot. I still am missing two toe nails. Hopefully they will come back soon. Caused me to miss the 2nd dive of the day. Of course I really wanted to make that dive so I could drown him. He never appologized. All he had to say was, Man thats gona hurt"! It took all I had to not give him a demonstration of pain for himself.

 

[Cacia]

just curious, did you curse spontaneously?

 

[Misplaced Priority]

just curious, did you curse spontaneously?

Well, I can't repeat what was going through my head. Being a fine southern gentleman, I managed to keep it clean. I had my daughter and son with me as well there were other ladies on the boat.

I did have to laugh at the guys from the Sand Dollar dive boat. I could tell they were cursing the guy in Spanish though.

 

[CoyKoi]

Aside from decomp sickness ..what and where are your battle scars..be it from sea life or monster boats?

St Maarten a couple of years ago...An 50-something fellow diver on vacation from the UK, had a heart attack in the water at the end of a shallow, gentle afternoon dive. He managed to get back into the boat with the help of the captain, but collapsed and died on the boat a few minutes later. CPT recalled all the divers. My husband is a nurse anesthetist and did the rescue breathing while another diver did chest compressions. They kept it up for 45 minutes until we got back to the dock and the ambulance came. The boat was small, holding about 12 divers, mostly OW students. We all thought the OW students would be so tramatized by seeing someone die literally at their feet, that they would never dive again. To their credit, every OW student came back to finish their check out dives the next day, a little more humble about their own mortality.

We felt terrible for the diver's wife who was waiting for the boat at the dock, and comforted her the best we could. But she was a rock. After all, what better way to check out of this 'veil of tears' than while doing something you love and doing with people you enjoy being with. Sure beats wasting away in an institution until you can't recognize your own kids.

Never end the day without telling those you are close to how much you love them, and cherish every moment God grants us here on Earth.

 

[Misplaced Priority]

After all, what better way to check out of this 'veil of tears' than while doing something you love and doing with people you enjoy being with. Sure beats wasting away in an institution until you can't recognize your own kids.

Never end the day without telling those you are close to how much you love them, and cherish every moment God grants us here on Earth.

Thats for sure!

 

[vox]

After all, what better way to check out of this 'veil of tears' than while doing something you love and doing with people you enjoy being with. Sure beats wasting away in an institution until you can't recognize your own kids.

Never end the day without telling those you are close to how much you love them, and cherish every moment God grants us here on Earth.

Ya know, you are absolutely right. I was kinda wigged when I read your post but your summation is perfection.

If I'm gonna go out...on a dive wouldn't be all that bad.

On my checkout dives in Balmorhea, Texas, my ears and fingers kept gettin' nipped on by these pesky minoe type fish. Evidently, they are used to divers feeding them and they go straight for anything that remotely resembles a Oscar Meyer Weiner. Go fig.