We might stop diving

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Thanks for so many great responses! I particularly liked those from Mike, NW Grateful Diver, TS&M, … but many others were good, too. And all were respectful, I appreciate that.

I see that many of you were also saddened by the death of Quero, and most were sobered as well. And our sincere condolences to those who are struggling with disease, or who have lost loved ones. I know how both of these things feel!

A few comments on your comments….

Some of the comments compared diving to alternatives like Doritos, knitting, or not living at all. Those are false comparisons for us. If we stop diving, we wouldn’t be sitting eating Doritos, or simply spending more time at the office. We have a full life. Diving is part of that, but it is not the most important thing, or even the second most important. We would be doing the things we love to do together (key word: together) … like seeing nature in any form (hiking, biking, travel, wildlife watching, …). we plan to move to Africa, then to France for a year or two after we both retire …. we love classical music …. I could go on ….

Yes, living is inherently dangerous. We must accept risk as a fact of living. But that does not mean we accept any risk no matter how large, if it offers us pleasure in return. Some folks are willing to accept the risks for motorcycle riding, skydiving, etc. – not me. Thrill sports have never been my style. Being “at one” with nature is more my style.

We are not thinking of death every time we enter the water, nor every time we get up in the morning. After reading all the comments, I realized that whether diving is, in general, safe, is not the primary consideration. Whether diving is safe for us is the primary consideration. Mike’s comments on Rescue Diving course hit home. We are going to look for a few more well-taught courses before we decide to maybe hang up the regs for good. We’ll try one more time, maybe even two or three more times. But we do need to get a better handle on the risk of diving, and I’ll say again that the scuba industry has not been very helpful in this regard.

It still bothers me that even experienced divers die diving. Not just Quero, either. Even if we get the best possible training, we could still succumb. After the course(s), we still have to evaluate our skill and comfort about diving. I have experienced a level of panic (call it very high anxiety) that need not have occurred given the circumstances, but then again could have been much worse if the circumstances had been a bit more challenging. Obviously, I am not the only one! Again going back to Mike’s response, our disposition to panic might be too much to continue. I am aware that sometimes panic can be generated from not knowing what to do – so maybe the Rescue course will help with that.

For now, we plan to continue, especially with training, and with strict limits for visibility. We’ll re-evaluate after that.

Thanks again for all your thoughtful comments.

Bill

Remember that experienced bicyclists die biking. I have a hard time thinking of diving as more dangerous than riding a bike with cars.
 
My first dive buddy (and wife) had early onset of Alzheimer's and died at 57. Another dive buddy (and girlfriend) died of a respiratory infection at 49. I'm pretty sure they would have preferred to continue living and diving. As with anything in life, we try to mitigate our danger to do the things we love. I hope to be diving as long as I can breathe on my own.
 
Remember that experienced bicyclists die biking. I have a hard time thinking of diving as more dangerous than riding a bike with cars.
We do have Danvolker here on the board who experienced the pain of biking first hand not long ago (wonder if he ever got a definite answer to wether that was related to his amnesia episode)
 
I can't fathom giving up diving due to someone else's incident. When it is my time to go, I will go, be it doing a deco dive, with tri-mix, and a drysuit or driving to work on my 3 mile commute. Personally, I think the stress of my job will be the death on me. While diving, I am relieving stress. I may die underwater but if I do, it will be a blessing compared to working myself to death.

I do mean this with the utmost respect, if it scares you, give it up. If it is the best thing in the world for your mental state, as it is mine, dive until you can't anymore and you may live longer.
 
There have certainly been some interesting and insightful posts. However if it has gotten to point where the possibility of dying starts to bother you (not just acknowledge that it can happen ) then it is indeed time to candidly reassess your reasons for diving and your reasons for stopping. Because of course at that point the bottom line is, statistics are meaningless.

People stop doing potentially dangerous sports and activities all the time like riding motorcycles etc. and move on to different things. There is no shame and no one but you can make such a decision. And the fact that you did it, can never be taken away.



That said, I have to admit that I have always liked this quote from Braveheart "All men die How many men truly live."
 
It still bothers me that even experienced divers die diving. Not just Quero, either. I dislike those comments above that seemed to have a tone akin to "they should have been smarter than that". That's the point, friend! Quero was smarter than that. But something else happened -- we may never know what. This "something else" (panic, perhaps) could happen to every one of us, no matter how well-trained.

This is false. The problem here is that we don't want to look at a lot of the mistakes that she made because we thinks it reflects badly on our memory of her.

She was experimenting with new gear to her (drysuit) on a dive where she also took a camera (and decided to go solo) and did not make any attempt to reduce the complexity of the dive to reduce task loading.
She overweighted herself which is a mistake that was made because of her new gear config.
She was diving with too small of a wing for her gear configuration and it could not float her.
She ran her gas down too low.
She knew she was low on gas and chose to re-descend rather than simply stay on the surface.
She went solo, when she was low on gas.

Those were all actions/decisions/mistakes that happened *prior* to the disabling event and the "something else (panic, perhaps)" occurred. If you only focus on what we don't know about her reaction immediately after she ran OOA then I agree it looks like a mystery and if you can't get past analyzing the accident in those terms then I think you really should hang it up. If you can't take some really obvious lessons home about how to never wind up in that situation, then, yes, this isn't a sport for you.

It really isn't that dangerous, but you're going to have to decide which pill to take. Through one door this accident is a big scary mystery and you should walk away from scuba. Through the other door scuba is pretty safe as long as you don't get complacent and continuously analyze the risks that you're running and make adjustments -- but you might have to be critical of mistakes that were clearly made here.
 
I understand that there might come a day, when I too might have to give up diving, for heath concerns or physical limitations. One could argue, I will be trying to prevent my untimely death, so I sympathize with your dilemma. Risk management might extend your life span, but make no mistake, whether you lock yourself up in a closet or jump out of airplanes, you time on earth is predestine. There will come the seconds where life is... and life is no more. My advice to you is: whatever you chose to do, come to terms with your own mortality and embrace it. Life would be meaningless without death.
 
Driving down the interstate at 70 mph, I sometimes reflect that I am:

1.) Hurtling in a couple of tons or so of steel, chrome, plastic, etc..., with a huge amount of momentum that's not under fine control and cannot be readily stopped (if you've ever hydroplaned or slid uncontrollably on ice, you know what I'm talking about).

2.) Perhaps have one hand on the wheel, and a single unexpected physical or mental aberration like a severe muscle spasm, seizure, brief faint, aneurysm popping or who knows how many other things could make my hand let go, or arm drop while maintaining grip, for a few moments.

3.) The car would whip to the side, roll, etc..., or perhaps ram head-on into another vehicle, killing me and somebody's family.

4.) And the above can be true for every car all around me, dozens of them. Even if I do everything right, another driver, who didn't take his epilepsy medication, or medicine for high blood pressure & had a stroke, or a sudden heart attack, can careen into me or one of my loved ones. A co-worker & her husband were struck by a drunk driver; her husband had lengthy debilitating issues with bone infection of the leg.

Yet I drive. Mindful that it has inherent danger.

At least in the event of a lethal dive, I'm only likely to kill myself, and unlikely to be killed by someone else.

My point is, a lot of things can get frightening if you stop & obsess about the danger of them.

Richard.
 
"I'm scared before every dive I make ...that's normal. Not being scared, now that's scary." Jill Heinerth quoted in The Six Skills (Steve Lewis).

None of us is getting younger but understanding our limitations and acting accordingly is major contribution to our health and safety. I feel safe as long as I stay within my comfort zone and then extend it as my comfort zone grows. Diving and exercise is what keeps me going
 
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