Boy do I feel ill...

[jlehigh]

Yes, I'm a newb ](*,)

I am also one unlucky SOB.. Yesterday my wife and I dove our first independant dive! (My log: 4 open water dives in class, 3 dives with a DM, 1 independant)

The plan was to dive from the shore at Alki Cove 2 until we reached 35', then turn parralel to the beach for 7-10 Min then return to shore with a short stop at 15'. Total projected dive time = 20min, max depth 35'.

All in all we executed the plan very well, though my wife had some problems equalizing and experienced a reverse block on the way up. I sat on the bottom waiting for her to equalize at our max depth so I ended up with a max depth of 40' instead of the planned 35. We also ascended from 22' faster than I would have liked (not uncontrolled but missed the safety stop).

Here's where is got interesting. Upon surfacing I began feeling anxiety like symptoms. Numbness, Intentional breathing ect ect. DCS was in the back of my mind but there was ZERO reason to think the dive profile could even remotely cause it.

My symptoms grew worse however and by the time I got home there was a tingleing sensation in my fingers!! So I decided to be safe and head to the ER. I actually got yelled at by the nurse because they were VERY busy and I insisted I at least get some oxygen until I could be seen The oxygen helped a ton but I began shaking uncontrollably (what a wuss).

ANYWAY it turned out the energy I used up diving was the last bit I had left to fight a Virus I didnt know I had.. My lungs were fine and I didnt have DCS, but the virus decided to suck the life out of me during/just after the dive. DCS, Anxiety, and Viruses all have very similar symptoms so it was a rough few hrs..

I'm not sure there is much of a lesson here for folks beyond the common teaching of diving HEALTHY, but in this case I didnt know I wasn't..

On a brighter note, it was a GEORGOUS evening on the water front and visibility was terrific (20'+).

[thelawgoddess]

wow; that would be scary! you definitely shouldn't feel bad about going to the ER - always better to be safe than sorry.

thanks for sharing your story. hope you're feeling better soon!

[Tom Nic]

Better safe than sorry... when in doubt, check it out.

Thanks for telling your story.

[DiverDown]

I have had a few dives were I had sworn that I was bent. You go back and read some literature that you have acquired through past classes and yep they say your bent. You go over your dive profile and think I cant be bent. This is the problem, What do you do, am I bent or not? I remember one time that after two repetitive deep dives. An hour or so later I started loosing vision in my right eye. I was scared to death! I stopped by the local fire station and they put me on 02. They then told me after a few minutes that it wasn't DCI. So I went home embarrassed and called DAN they said the same thing..

I posted here a few months ago about my story of being bent from a dive trip to Canada. The moral of that story was that I didn't want to believe that I could be bent.

You did the right thing to at least get a professional opinion. And you can always call DAN if you have any doubts what-so ever. Thanks for sharing your story..

Jason

[lamont]

i got hit by a virus 24h after doing support recently. the symptoms would have been very DCS-like, except the profile was ultra conservative since we followed up guys doing deco for a 2h 100 fsw dive and my symptoms didn't onset until 24h later.

having a virus hit you right when you're completing a dive must be a very disconcerting experience...

[Sounder]

Excellent plug for DAN Diver Down!!! jlehigh if you don't have it already, I think everyone here would HIGHLY recommend getting the DAN insurance. $44 for a family membership (less for a single) and $75 per person per year for the best dive accident insurance I can find. There's just no excuse not to have it, unless of course you enjoy coordinating and paying for chamber rides , evacuation ](*,) , travel for your family to come visit you if you get sick/injured/bent on vacation (anything 50 miles from your zip code) , and 24 hour on-call doctors at Duke Medical Center , out of your own pocketbook !!!

There have been folks here who were very glad they had the insurance when they needed it. Knocking on wood, it'll be the best investment I hope I never use. There's just NO REASON WHATSOEVER why all divers shouldn't have it. Plus, they send you an interesting magazine each month or two too!

http://www.DiversAlertNetwork.org

[diver-dad]

My symptoms grew worse however and by the time I got home there was a tingleing sensation in my fingers!! So I decided to be safe and head to the ER. I actually got yelled at by the nurse because they were VERY busy and I insisted I at least get some oxygen until I could be seen The oxygen helped a ton but I began shaking uncontrollably (what a wuss).

ANYWAY it turned out the energy I used up diving was the last bit I had left to fight a Virus I didnt know I had.. My lungs were fine and I didnt have DCS, but the virus decided to suck the life out of me during/just after the dive. DCS, Anxiety, and Viruses all have very similar symptoms so it was a rough few hrs..

Attaboy!!! DiverDown is exactly right - you did precisely the right thing going to medical!

Unfortunately, you met up with someone who didn't have a clue that DCS is serious business.

BTW, do you have any diver insurance like DAN coverage?? If not, I strongly urge you to consider it!

I'm very glad you're doing better. Good thing that no harm was done & on top of that you've got a good "sea story" to tell!

Take care!

[Zen Diver v1]

I was scared to death! I stopped by the local fire station and they put me on 02. They then told me after a few minutes that it wasn't DCI. So I went home embarrassed and called DAN they said the same thing..

Jason

Well, you may have been bent. The average firefighter knows nothing about DCS. I did four years of training for my BSN and it wasn't covered at all. Most MD's get maybe a day in 8 years of training. A firefighter's EMT training is a few months. You can bet DCS isn't covered. This is not a knock against firefighters, but their opinions should not be taken as definitive.

-Valerie
RN, BSN, CEN
Formerly Bent Diver

[Sounder]

In a former life, I was an EMT-P (paramedic) and it wasn't covered in my class - I was first certified in Arizona. Basically the class on DCS went something like this:

"you'll probably never see this, but there's a paragraph in the book about it so we have to tell you... if a scuba diver comes up too fast, they get gas bubbles in their blood which can kill them. The only thing you can do is put them on 100% O2 by non-rebreather mask and transport rapidly. Being in Arizona though, you'll never need to know this so don't worry about it."

DCS is usually offered as a continuing education course in areas that have diving. You'll never find one in AZ. Now I just do very part-time ski patrol in the winter (gets the free pass for Mrs. Sounder and I, pro-deals on gear, and a few extra bucks to cover gas!) - not a whole lot of DCS on the ski slope either, and the only reason I've learned more than what I wrote above was because of my personal interest in learning it.

Trust DAN, and be sure to get your DAN insurance... asap, before your next dive. You could have been bent, you could have had a virus, you might have just had a bad turkey sandwich.

[jlehigh]

Thanks all for not laughing at me in all my Newbness The wife and I will be DAN insured shortly..

What timing though.. The dive literally took the last bit of energy reserve I had and this virus hit me like a truck. I spent all day yesterday in bed and am just now starting to feel better. I have never been so glad to have a soar throat As soon as the soar throat was painfully apparent I knew I was just unlucky and my ailments werent at all dive related (unless I swallowed a lil jellyfish)

I agree this is a great plug for DAN simply because allot can happen to and within your body for which the typical ER staff won't neccesarily know what to do with and neither will you. If I hadnt raised a stink and got yelled at by the ER nurse it could have been hrs before I even saw a Dr. and had I had a deeper/longer dive profile and truly been bent I could have been in allot of trouble.

Well it was a good lesson and I'll be that much better prepared and experienced next time.. ::Nyquil tablets are my firend::

[DiverDown]

I was scared to death! I stopped by the local fire station and they put me on 02. They then told me after a few minutes that it wasn't DCI. So I went home embarrassed and called DAN they said the same thing..

Jason

Well, you may have been bent. The average firefighter knows nothing about DCS. I did four years of training for my BSN and it wasn't covered at all. Most MD's get maybe a day in 8 years of training. A firefighter's EMT training is a few months. You can bet DCS isn't covered. This is not a knock against firefighters, but their opinions should not be taken as definitive.

-Valerie
RN, BSN, CEN
Formerly Bent Diver

It turned out that it was an ocular migrane?? Some kind of an eye headache not nessasarely acompanied with a migrane, as I didnt have a headache.

[RSdancey]

You could have been bent on that dive (though apparently you were not).

After about 5 minutes of breathing gas under pressure, you will have nitrogen in solution in your cells that will come out as bubbles when you return to normal surface pressure. The 'book' says you won't have enough to cause you to be bent, but the 'book' makes a whole lot of assumptions about you that you should know about.

First, it assumes you're reasonably healthy to begin with. All sorts of problems, from dehydration to diabetes, to other physical ailments could affect your body's natural ability to deal with offgassing.

Second, it assumes you're ascending at a constant slow rate. Imagine that your body is a bottle of soda. If you slooooooooowly open the cap, you'll hear a hiss of gas, and a few bubbles will appear in the liquid, but it will be safe to pour. If, on the other hand, you zip off the cap suddenly, the gas in the solution will cascade into foam, and you'll have a real mess on your hands. That is what you do to your body when you come up from depth too fast - even a depth as shallow as 35 feet. Until you begin planned deco dives, a too-rapid ascent may be the most dangerous thing you could do in the water - regardless of what the "book says" about NDL.

Third, it is possible that your body has a birth defect known as a "shunt". Many people do. One of the most common is a PFO. That's a tiny hole between the two halves of your heart which allows bloood to travel from the veins into the arteries without going through the lungs first. Your lungs are your first line of defense against bubbles in your blood - most bubbles in your blood are processed naturally by your lung tissue. Blood that avoids the lungs carries with it the risk of a bubble being forced "down" your arterial system into smaller and smaller capillaries where it can do a lot of damage. One estimate is that nearly 30% of the population has a PFO; though many people with them dive for years without incident and may never know they were at risk. Even if you executed a perfect "by the book" dive, you might still find yourself bent due to an undiagnosed shunt. If you're planning on doing deep, long dives, you should consider getting yourself tested.

Take those charts and 'the book' as a good baseline that has been well tested for safety. But don't take them as infallable. Understand the assumptions made when those charts were drafted, and think about how your physical condition may have affected those assumptions FOR YOU.

Safe diving!

Ryan