No safe bets: Scuba diving roulette
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by CAROL LIDSKER
SAN PEDRO, Belize (6 Oct 2005) -- My husband I decided to take the perfect scuba diving holiday last summer with a trip to Turneffe Island in Belize, one of the atolls 30 miles off the coast of Belize City. There, with a package of seventeen dives in a week's time, we looked forward to exploring the teeming marine life of the reefs. We would be in the company of about twenty other divers who were also drawn to Turneffe for its world class diving.
On the first day of diving, after climbing back onboard the boat following my second, I sat back to gaze at the intensely blue Belizian sky. Almost immediately, my abdomen started to tighten to the point where I had to lay down in the boat to get comfortable. My husband was clearly worried and said so to the divemaster onboard. Fortunately, we were only five minutes from the lodge where, after removing my wetsuit, I was assisted to a chair out of the intense heat of the sun into a cooler spot in the shade. As I sat stunned trying to stay calm, I noticed a tingling in my feet. With trepidation, I realized that tingling was related to the bends. Lodge staff, instigated by my husband, took quick action to get me on oxygen and call the nearest hyperbaric chamber to consult the doctor.
Two hours after the initial incident, I was transported by speedboat from our remote and tiny island consisting of one lodge to the hyperbaric chamber in San Pedro, two hours away on the larger island of Ambergris Cay, Belize. By that time, I was having trouble walking and had lost control of my sphincter muscle. Luckily, the oxygen supply lasted up until the final forty-five minutes of the boat trip when the fourth and last tank was depleted. In the darkness, the skipper made his way to the dock where a waiting van whisked me to the clinic. There, after a cursory doctor's examination, I was rushed into the hyperbaric chamber not to re-emerge for over six hours.
Treatment and Diagnosis
That first treatment was followed by twenty-six more over the course of 2 ½ weeks for a total of seventy-two hours in the hyperbaric chamber. As long as the doctor saw any signs of progress, he recommended further treatment. If not for the complications that pressurized oxygen posed for my eyes after fifteen or more treatments, I might have kept them up. My vision was already beginning to weaken and blur with the last few treatments. At the time, I didn't know that my weakened vision was only a temporary state due to an edema of the optic nerve from the pressurized oxygen that would reverse itself within weeks.
I was shocked to learn that the diagnosis was severe spinal cord decompression illness. The doctor noted that mine was the second worst case of the 350 odd cases he had seen in his fifteen years working at the chamber. By the time I left Belize, I had recovered from total paralysis of the lower body to unsteady albeit unassisted walking. Now, two months after the accident, I still suffer from nerve damage to my lower body preventing normal sensory feelings. The prognosis is a six-month to one year recuperation period with uncertainty as to the full extent of recovery.
Search for Reasons
From the moment I got "bent", I was questioned by the dive staff of the lodge and later the medical staff at the chamber in an effort to uncover the reasons for my condition. I was fairly certain it had nothing to do with my diving since I had been a very cautious diver on all of my roughly fifty previous dives. Besides, on the two 18-meter (60-ft) dives we had done that day, my dive computer showed I was well within normal limits. Moreover, my buddy/ husband and I had been side-by-side during both dives of the day and we had completed three-minute safety stops at five meters (fifteen feet).
Two unexpected, non dive-related questions, however, were asked repeatedly--whether I had exercised or taken a hot shower. These were risk factors of which I knew nothing. I had in fact done some core exercises--jumping squats, pushups, and lunges--before the second dive thinking that in an air-conditioned room with plenty of drinking water, over-exertion would not be a problem. The head doctor at the chamber, however, surmised that exercise I did was the most likely reason I got the bends. He theorized that the core exercises might have caused the residual nitrogen bubbles in my system to amass in the lower spinal cord cutting off blood flow and oxygen to the nerves and muscles of the lower body. But the doctors I consulted when I returned to the U.S. were not all convinced that exercise was the direct cause of the decompression illness although they could not offer other explanations. It all seemed so unclear and haphazard to me.
Lessons Learned
I felt disillusioned and saddened that I had gotten such a severe case of decompression illness most likely from a risk factor--exercise--of which I was completely unaware. I had always been attentive to the risks of being underwater and made sure to practice all the safety measures I had been taught in my PADI open water class. Was it so easy to get the bends even when you tried to do everything right?
Although the likelihood of experiencing decompression illness is generally low, being unaware of important risk factors can increase one's chances of getting bent. Clearly, that's what happened in my case. These factors take on greater significance when there are multiple dives in a day creating an increased amount of residual nitrogen bubbles in one's system. While generally known risk factors include age, obesity, fatigue, use of alcohol, and dehydration, to this list should be added exercise/exertion and heating up the core body through hot showers or even use of a wet suit on a hot day. Based on my own experience, I feel that dive instructors should emphasize these risks for new divers and also for experienced ones who intend to do multiple dives in a single day. No one should end up getting the bends as I did when it could have been prevented by a more cautious, informed approach!
© CDNN - CYBER DIVER NEWS NETWORK
Powered by CDNN - CYBER DIVER News Network
by CAROL LIDSKER
SAN PEDRO, Belize (6 Oct 2005) -- My husband I decided to take the perfect scuba diving holiday last summer with a trip to Turneffe Island in Belize, one of the atolls 30 miles off the coast of Belize City. There, with a package of seventeen dives in a week's time, we looked forward to exploring the teeming marine life of the reefs. We would be in the company of about twenty other divers who were also drawn to Turneffe for its world class diving.
On the first day of diving, after climbing back onboard the boat following my second, I sat back to gaze at the intensely blue Belizian sky. Almost immediately, my abdomen started to tighten to the point where I had to lay down in the boat to get comfortable. My husband was clearly worried and said so to the divemaster onboard. Fortunately, we were only five minutes from the lodge where, after removing my wetsuit, I was assisted to a chair out of the intense heat of the sun into a cooler spot in the shade. As I sat stunned trying to stay calm, I noticed a tingling in my feet. With trepidation, I realized that tingling was related to the bends. Lodge staff, instigated by my husband, took quick action to get me on oxygen and call the nearest hyperbaric chamber to consult the doctor.
Two hours after the initial incident, I was transported by speedboat from our remote and tiny island consisting of one lodge to the hyperbaric chamber in San Pedro, two hours away on the larger island of Ambergris Cay, Belize. By that time, I was having trouble walking and had lost control of my sphincter muscle. Luckily, the oxygen supply lasted up until the final forty-five minutes of the boat trip when the fourth and last tank was depleted. In the darkness, the skipper made his way to the dock where a waiting van whisked me to the clinic. There, after a cursory doctor's examination, I was rushed into the hyperbaric chamber not to re-emerge for over six hours.
Treatment and Diagnosis
That first treatment was followed by twenty-six more over the course of 2 ½ weeks for a total of seventy-two hours in the hyperbaric chamber. As long as the doctor saw any signs of progress, he recommended further treatment. If not for the complications that pressurized oxygen posed for my eyes after fifteen or more treatments, I might have kept them up. My vision was already beginning to weaken and blur with the last few treatments. At the time, I didn't know that my weakened vision was only a temporary state due to an edema of the optic nerve from the pressurized oxygen that would reverse itself within weeks.
I was shocked to learn that the diagnosis was severe spinal cord decompression illness. The doctor noted that mine was the second worst case of the 350 odd cases he had seen in his fifteen years working at the chamber. By the time I left Belize, I had recovered from total paralysis of the lower body to unsteady albeit unassisted walking. Now, two months after the accident, I still suffer from nerve damage to my lower body preventing normal sensory feelings. The prognosis is a six-month to one year recuperation period with uncertainty as to the full extent of recovery.
Search for Reasons
From the moment I got "bent", I was questioned by the dive staff of the lodge and later the medical staff at the chamber in an effort to uncover the reasons for my condition. I was fairly certain it had nothing to do with my diving since I had been a very cautious diver on all of my roughly fifty previous dives. Besides, on the two 18-meter (60-ft) dives we had done that day, my dive computer showed I was well within normal limits. Moreover, my buddy/ husband and I had been side-by-side during both dives of the day and we had completed three-minute safety stops at five meters (fifteen feet).
Two unexpected, non dive-related questions, however, were asked repeatedly--whether I had exercised or taken a hot shower. These were risk factors of which I knew nothing. I had in fact done some core exercises--jumping squats, pushups, and lunges--before the second dive thinking that in an air-conditioned room with plenty of drinking water, over-exertion would not be a problem. The head doctor at the chamber, however, surmised that exercise I did was the most likely reason I got the bends. He theorized that the core exercises might have caused the residual nitrogen bubbles in my system to amass in the lower spinal cord cutting off blood flow and oxygen to the nerves and muscles of the lower body. But the doctors I consulted when I returned to the U.S. were not all convinced that exercise was the direct cause of the decompression illness although they could not offer other explanations. It all seemed so unclear and haphazard to me.
Lessons Learned
I felt disillusioned and saddened that I had gotten such a severe case of decompression illness most likely from a risk factor--exercise--of which I was completely unaware. I had always been attentive to the risks of being underwater and made sure to practice all the safety measures I had been taught in my PADI open water class. Was it so easy to get the bends even when you tried to do everything right?
Although the likelihood of experiencing decompression illness is generally low, being unaware of important risk factors can increase one's chances of getting bent. Clearly, that's what happened in my case. These factors take on greater significance when there are multiple dives in a day creating an increased amount of residual nitrogen bubbles in one's system. While generally known risk factors include age, obesity, fatigue, use of alcohol, and dehydration, to this list should be added exercise/exertion and heating up the core body through hot showers or even use of a wet suit on a hot day. Based on my own experience, I feel that dive instructors should emphasize these risks for new divers and also for experienced ones who intend to do multiple dives in a single day. No one should end up getting the bends as I did when it could have been prevented by a more cautious, informed approach!
© CDNN - CYBER DIVER NEWS NETWORK
