Trip Report Why I Won't Be Returning to Cozumel-Part 1,2&3

[living4experiences]

As a solo diver, I went to Cozumel in March 2021 for my 8th or so diving trip. Since Americans can't really dive anywhere outside the U.S. except the Bahamas and Mexico without a big hassle with COVID restrictions, testing, etc., I've been really antsy to dive, so I chose Cozumel. I booked this trip at the end of January, and I stayed at the Hotel Cozumel (now Wyndham) and went diving with Salty Endeavors. In general, my hotel stay was very good. The food was average and the service was excellent. All hotel staff were happy to help. This was my first time doing an AI, and I liked that I didn't have to seek out food for every meal. Usually AI resorts charge double for a single traveler, but with the great pricing that was in place in January, there was no single penalty. Even though I didn't dive with the onsite dive op, I still got a dive gear locker at no cost. I have never stayed at Hotel Cozumel, so I have no basis of comparison pre and post Wyndham's purchase, but I would return here. The resort was only about 30% occupied and about half of those guests were divers.

The Diving. This was my first time using Salty Endeavors. The boat picked me up at the on-site pier and there was no pick-up fee charged by the hotel. That was really nice, since other hotel piers along our pick-up zone charged the divers a pier fee. The dive guides were very good, for the most part. I was a little put off by one of the dive guides handling the marine life on a night dive. The guide picked up a balloon fish so he could show us how they blow up as a way to protect themselves when threatened. As usual, Mexico doesn't practice what they preach. It's okay if the dive guides harass the marine life, but we can't even wear gloves in the marine park.

I haven't been to Cozumel since December 2019 and I wasn't very happy with the condition of the reef back then. They had just started the rotating closures of the dive sites. I know Cozumel was hit by two hurricanes last fall, so I had that in mind, too, when I went diving. Again, I just wanted to go somewhere to dive. Well, the reef is still in really bad shape. I guess I wasn't surprised, but I was hopeful that with no cruise ships, it might have improved some. Some of the sites had so much dead coral that I got bored trying to find some signs of life. These coral bones were everywhere. There were only juvenile fishes and hardly any adult fish. I did many night dives (my favorite!) and saw the most sea life on those dives. It's also where I got the best photos and videos. Santa Rosa Wall was the only place where there was still a lot of color to the reef. I'll try to get some photos on here in the next post.

Dive Profile. I used Nitrox the whole trip, except on the last day, because the dive guide forgot to load it onto the boat. We were already on the way to the dive site, so I had to use air. I'm a very conservative diver and I don't need to go deep to have fun. My profiles were 40-60 feet with a couple of 85-foot dives. I did 3 dives a day for 6 days straight, 2 in the a.m. and 1 night dive. I drink a lot of water and bring Powerade Zero from home to drink on the boat during the surface intervals.

My last day of diving concluded with a night dive. I had the next day free to rest and dry my gear, then fly home the following day after that. After washing and hanging all my gear, I went to bed. I was feeling fine, just really tired. About two hours into sleep, I was awakened with a really painful feeling in my upper chest and abdomen. At first, I thought I had fallen asleep in a weird position, so I tossed and turned to try to get comfortable and the pain was intensifying. It felt better if I sat up for a few moments, then I'd lay back down and here comes the pain again. It felt like skin and muscle pain. My skin was itchy and warm and it hurt to touch my skin. I also was having cold sweats. I've had skin bends before, so now I'm out of bed and looking in the mirror and, yep, it's skin bends. I've never been formally treated for skin bends by a medical professional because I've been leery of the quality of care I'd receive in a foreign country, plus skin bends aren't known to be too serious. In fact, the first time I got them, I just thought my wetsuit was too tight at depth and it was a rash from the wetsuit compression. But this time it felt different, so I called DAN. I have their dive insurance.

Okay. I have to split up this post because of a character limit. See part 2 to follow.

 

[living4experiences]

Part 2:

The Hospital. After speaking with DAN, they gave me two phone numbers to call the hospital. I called the Costa Med Hospital in Cozumel and no one picked up the phone. Are you kidding me? This is a hospital and they don't answer the phone? I called DAN again and he gave me two more phone numbers. I called those numbers and after no answers repeatedly, and then finally getting through a phone tree of press this, press that, I got a real person 20 minutes after I talked to DAN. After describing my symptoms, the person asked if I wanted an ambulance. I felt capable of walking down to the lobby of the hotel and getting a cab, but he said there were no cabs in Cozumel at 1:30 a.m., so I agreed to the ambulance. (I had not rented a car for the trip.) He said it would be about 20 minutes. After waiting 30 minutes, I called, asked where the ambulance was and he said 15 more minutes. After 45 minutes, I called again. The person says, "You are at the Westin, right?" I said, "No, I told you I'm at the Wyndham Hotel Cozumel." He said, "The ambulance is at the Westin. I'll send them to you. It'll be 10 minutes." Finally, after an hour, I'm picked up. Had this been a life-threatening event, I would be dead in the hotel parking lot by the time they arrived. And as a side note, I noticed cab drivers in the hotel parking lot, so I could have taken a cab.

After arriving at the ER, they did the usual stuff, take your vitals, ask you what's wrong. They asked me about my dive profile. I brought my dive computer with me so I could accurately recite the depths I had been diving. More talk, more people in and out. They put me on oxygen. There must have been eight different people coming in and out asking me the same questions. I finally saw the ER doctor, but not a dive medicine doctor. I asked when I could see the dive doctor. They told me he was at home and would be in in about 3-4 hours. Uh, what? I asked why he won't come in right now, and they said he uses his judgment whether he comes in based on what his staff tells him about the patient. I'm not happy about that. It was too inconvenient for him to come to the hospital to look at a dive accident patient.

Here's where it gets scary. More time goes by, then a male nurse comes in, doesn't say a word, doesn't introduce himself, doesn't make eye contact, and starts to lay out what looks to be an IV setup. I asked him, "What is that?" He said in broken English, "IV". I said, "Why?" He said, "That's what the doctor wants." I said, "Send in the doctor." The ER doctor comes in and says that this is "standard protocol" for dive accident cases. I said, "Why do you want to put in an IV if you don't even know what's wrong yet?" Again, he says it's standard protocol. Okay. I reluctantly concede because the doctors knows best. Right? Mr. Male Nurse comes back and is not wearing a name tag, so I asked him his name and he said Avro (pronounced Av-row).

Avro then starts tapping various veins in my arms but picks a vein on the top of my left arm just above the wrist bone to insert the needle. Having had surgery before, I've had IVs in my hands but not above the wrist. Very robotically, he goes in and he misses the vein. It hurt quite a bit and I said, "You missed the vein and that really hurt." He says nothing, pulls the needle back out and goes in again. He missed again. Now it's raging pain and I scream out. He says nothing. He goes in a third time and he hit a nerve and nearly sent me off the table. I scream louder and said, "You just hit my nerve! Take it out!!" He says, "There's no nerves there." Now I'm pissed, in pain, and this moron says there's no nerves in your arm?! At this point, I'm yelling, "Take the f***ing needle out now and get the f*** away from me." This nurse was so lacking in compassion and humanity. He never smiled, introduced himself, or made me feel at ease in any way. If this is what Mexican medical care looks like, I'm scared for the patients. It makes me really appreciate American doctors and nurses and how much they care about their patients with real, genuine humanity.

The end of the story is: I was there until 8:00 a.m., never saw the dive medicine doctor, never got treatment except for oxygen, and was discharged. The oxygen really helped because by the time I left, the pain was 90 percent gone and the splotchy rash was faint. I flew home the next day without incident. Dangerous medical care, poor diving conditions, this is why I'll never go back to Cozumel.

Post Trip. The incompetent and reckless nurse's stabbing of my nerve left me with a damaged nerve in my hand. This may or may not be permanent, as nerve damage takes a very long time to recover and sometimes never does.

Every time I've gotten skin bends, I evaluate what could have contributed to it so as to not let it happen again. You're not supposed to do heavy exercise after diving, but I wonder if washing all my gear in the hotel bathtub, bent over with my head below my heart, already tired from six days of diving, then lifting heavy, wet gear and transferring it across the room to the balcony and hanging it up could have been a factor. This is not atypical for what I do on a daily basis when diving, though. I always rinse everything at the end of every dive day.

I was advised by a DAN medicine doctor several years ago that getting Nitrox certified may help in preventing skin bends, so it makes me wonder also if not having Nitrox on that last day could have contributed. There's so much mystery and nuance in dive medicine and dive injuries....

Part 3 will be some photos.

 

[tmassey]

You may want to get checked for a PFO. I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice, etc. But I know of two different people who had multiple incidents of skin bends after multi-day diving trips. Both had a PFO. Just a thought, YMMV, etc.

 

[living4experiences]

Part 3: Here's some of the critters that are still in Cozumel with a video link to a beautiful squid on a night dive.

 

[Saboteur]

Part 3: Here's some of the critters that are still in Cozumel with a video link to a beautiful squid on a night dive.

Sorry to hear about the bad ending of your trip. Hope it all turns out well.. enjoyed the squid vid.

 

[Edward3c]

When I went through basic training we were told to take a 24 hour off after a three days of diving. Sound like you did six days of intensive (not deep) diving. If I’m doing 4 of more dives a day I take from 12:00 on day 3 to 12:00 on day 4 off; then repeat.

 

[Centrals]

I was feeling fine, just really tired. About two hours into sleep, I was awakened with a really painful feeling in my upper chest and abdomen. At first, I thought I had fallen asleep in a weird position, so I tossed and turned to try to get comfortable and the pain was intensifying. It felt better if I sat up for a few moments, then I'd lay back down and here comes the pain again. It felt like skin and muscle pain. My skin was itchy and warm and it hurt to touch my skin. I also was having cold sweats. I've had skin bends before, so now I'm out of bed and looking in the mirror and, yep, it's skin bends. I've never been formally treated for skin bends by a medical professional because I've been leery of the quality of care I'd receive in a foreign country, plus skin bends aren't known to be too serious. In fact, the first time I got them, I just thought my wetsuit was too tight at depth and it was a rash from the wetsuit compression. But this time it felt different, so I called DAN. I have their dive insurance.

You should had taken medical advice after your first skin bend when returned home! Any reason why you did not do that?

 

[Divin'Papaw]

I assume you switched your computer on the last day to air? Silly question I know but it came to mind when you said they’d only had air for you on the boat that last day of diving.

 

[Centrals]

I assume you switched your computer on the last day to air? Silly question I know but it came to mind when you said they’d only had air for you on the boat that last day of diving.

Everyone in the group would be on air profile.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

Everyone in the group would be on air profile.

Not necessarily. The drift diving we do here in South FL air divers must ascend early themselves. The Nitrox divers stay down longer. Not sure if that is how it’s done in Cozumel or not. Regardless your computer needs to be set to your proper mix. I’m sure the OP remembered to do that ... but if not it could have led to the issue.