11 y/o Surfaces with Convulsions

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I wouldn't support a 12 year old driving tractors or loading and truck hauling cattle on public roads either, but that's how my dad trained me. He had a rougher start plowing with mules.
I find 12 years is probably the WORST age for starting a previously unknown technical activity. I have seen sons of farmers, instead, driving carefully a big tractor at 8 years old. A much better age for this than 12...

Your pool was only 80 cm or 2.6 feet deep tho? I don't see a learning opportunity there?
In reality they did a lot of useful activity inside this warm pool, specifically built for small children (6 months to 3 years) in the town of Reggio Emilia.
The instructor supervising this activity was named Roberta, and she was probably a completely crazy girl.
She asked the parent dealing with each child to do a lot of funny stuff, as pushing the 6-months baby underwater and keeping him/her down for 10-15 seconds. Pushing it to the bottom and watching him to resurface "swimming". Launching him in water form an height of 1 meter. At one year, those children were swimming autonomously thanks to small buoyancy devices inserted on their arms, albeit most of them were nit able yet to walk. They had to play games retrieving objects, initially floating objects, (so they had to swim) and later heavy objects, so they had to dive to the bottom of the pool, removing the buoyancy devices...
Around 1.5 years they were introduced to using fins, mask and snorkel, without those buoyancy devices, so they became "snorkelers". They also started to learn ear and mask equalization, albeit the limited depth was not really necessitating this. Around 2 years they had their first air tank. Initially the tank was on the bottom, they had to go down, retrieve the reg, make a some full breathings, spit the reg and resurface while exhaling.
They did drink a lot of water doing this, before learning that you need first to exhale for evacuating water form the reg!
Then they had the tank strapped on their back, and they did learn to swim underwater, they had to never touch the bottom, nor the surface. Roberta was particularly severe about the kicking style, making any sort of bad joke to children who did flex their legs or hit the surface with their fins...
Towards the end of this course, when the children were close to 3 years, she started a new game, using a large "plastic castle" submerged in the pool. This was made of several rooms, some with a roof (so you was trapped inside a box without access to the surface) and other with open ceiling (so you could breath above water). The rooms were connected each other with horizontal plastic tubes, entirely submerged, where the children could barely swim through. First the children explored the underwater castle using the air tank, so entering rooms without air above was not a problem. Then they had to to do the same, retrieving small toys hidden in the rooms, while freediving. This was indeed quite dangerous, a couple of times some baby remained trapped inside one of these rooms with the roof, and Roberta had to quickly savage them opening the ceiling (which was possible from outside, but not from inside).
She was really a crazy girl, my wife had some row with her, as my wife was worried of the danger of some of the games.
At 3 year, we moved to a deeper pool, in Montecchio Emilia, and now there was no need anymore of a supervising instructor, as my wife is qualified for babies 3 years and above.
So there we had the possibility to step up to more serious training: removal and evacuation of the mask and of the reg (also simultaneously), buddy breathing with a single reg, and those technical exercises which were standard when we started diving in the seventies, such as the "duck dive", the wheel, the square ascent, the horizontal translations with hand opposition, etc.
And of course breathing control, buoyancy control (using the lungs, not the BCD), etc...
This was an Olympic pool, in its deepest part it was around 4m. It did take almost one year before we did bring them in this deep part. And only after almost two years of training in this pool we allowed them to dive with us in the sea!
 
Yikes! On the one hand, I wish I had gotten something like that intensive in-water training as a young kid (>3 y.o.?). On the other hand, it does seem like Roberta was running some secret project to breed kids with gills by Darwinian selection...
 
Being old enough to understand this statement taught by my first Scuba instructor would be essential:

:openquoteblack: Never hold your breath while ascending on Scuba or your lungs will explode in your chest and you will die a horrible death. :closedquoteblack:

Harsh, but quite memorable.
 
this statement taught by my first Scuba instructor
...in other words, the idea has been around for awhile.

I am frankly amazed at some of the conversation here. The risk of lung barotrauma has been well known since long before anyone in this thread was born. It is absolutely hammered into new divers--never hold your breath!

As far as likelihood of this being the cause here, a joint PADI/DAN study a number of years ago found that the number one cause of preventable (i.e, not something like a heart attack) scuba incidents was barotrauma (like CAGE) following a rapid, usually panicked ascent. It is assumed that the panicked diver held the breath.
 
...in other words,the idea has been around for awhile.

I should have been more clear. I was referring to the part of this discussion on how young it is reasonable to teach a child to dive.

I have been trying to find the first documented case of pulmonary overinflation barotrauma in divers, or at least an early one. It probably occurred in the 4th century BC when breath-held divers used the open-bottom diving bell described by Aristotle.

There's all kinds of documentation on the history of DCS but nothing on air embolisms. Air embolism aren't even mentioned in the 1916 USN Diving Manual. I guess helmet divers never had a reason to hold their breath on ascent. They must have lost a bunch of combat swimmers using rebreathers before it was rediscovered... or somebody figured out the cause. The answer is probably hiding in some European library or military archive.
 
I am frankly amazed at some of the conversation here. The risk of lung barotrauma has been well known since long before anyone in this thread was born. It is absolutely hammered into new divers--never hold your breath!
Exactly. You can rule out, or at least move to the unlikely column, a lot of potentials due to the depth. DCS is unlikely, as is Ox Tox. Barotrauma can’t be dismissed so easily, and moves up in likelihood given the shallow depth. Partially because others drop out, but also because the relative change is greatest as you get closer to the surface.

I would have hoped this is well understood.
 
The factors leading to a sharp contraction of muscles are numerous, but if a person does not have problems with the central nervous system, there are few causes of seizures. This is cold water, constricting blood vessels, physical overstrain, and suppressed stress. If all of them have gathered and superimposed on each other, the probability of a seizure increases several times.

There are many other causes of seizures beside problems with the central nervous system and the few you listed. These include electrolyte disorders such as low sodium (hyponatremia), head trauma, withdrawal from alcohol, withdrawal from benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium, Ativan), low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), central nervous system infections such as meningitis, overdose of many different kinds of medications, just to name a few.

That's why I always take anti seizure medication over the counter when I go to the beach to take it if necessary.

I'm curious about the "if necessary" part. How do you determine when it's necessary to take something?

Even though you can order these medications on the internet, they're not harmless (and all the ones listed one the link you listed are prescription here in the US).

Depakote (valproic acid) - needs to have levels monitored or can have toxicity
Diamox (acetazolamide) - not an "anti-seizure" (anticonvulsant) medication but a diuretic.
Gabimax (gabapentin) - also not an anticonvulsant but used to treat chronic neuropathic (nerve) pain
 
There are many other causes of seizures beside problems with the central nervous system and the few you listed. These include electrolyte disorders such as low sodium (hyponatremia), head trauma, withdrawal from alcohol, withdrawal from benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium, Ativan), low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), central nervous system infections such as meningitis, overdose of many different kinds of medications, just to name a few.



I'm curious about the "if necessary" part. How do you determine when it's necessary to take something?

Even though you can order these medications on the internet, they're not harmless (and all the ones listed one the link you listed are prescription here in the US).

Depakote (valproic acid) - needs to have levels monitored or can have toxicity
Diamox (acetazolamide) - not an "anti-seizure" (anticonvulsant) medication but a diuretic.
Gabimax (gabapentin) - also not an anticonvulsant but used to treat chronic neuropathic (nerve) pain
I've had to take Diamox for a glaucoma issue. Nasty side-effects. I would NOT want to be diving while taking that stuff. I can't believe post #87 actually recommended drugs OTC that are not legal OTC in the US, even though he/she is in the US.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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