Asthma Question

[Robertson]

Hi,

I want to ask a question to any experienced divers or instructors on the board. Just came back from the worst dive of my life - I am pretty sure I had a minor asthma attack underwater. I'm not sure exactly what triggered it but it may have been saltwater because my mask was leaking. (I have only had one attack before in my life and have quite mild asthma so was cleared when I did my certification.) All I know is I started coughing underwater and couldn't stop, which made me start wheezing underwater.

So we come to my question: I tried to signal to my guide that I needed to go up, as I was having difficulty breathing. Instead,we continued the dive for 30 mins. Is this normal? I'm certainly grateful for his ability to calm me down underwater, but nonetheless I would have preferred a safe but more immedate ascent.

Thoughts? Thanks!

 

[scubamate]

Was this a drift dive or were you returning to the boat? If it was a drift, your guide should have brought you to the surface or sent you up with a buddy. If returning to the entry point, surface swims are much hard than swimming underwater so he did the right thing. IMHO.

 

[ScubaFreak]

Doesn't matter what kind of dive it was, if you wanted to go up, your guide should have acknowledged your wish and you should have ascended with your buddy.

 

[tedwhiteva]

Perhaps another question you should ask yourself is should you be diving with the possibility of an asthma attack?

 

[Robertson]

Thanks for your replies. Just to clarify, I know there have been a lot of posts on this board on asthma and I did not mean to ignite the whole "dive or not dive" debate. I acknowledge that I must, and indeed am, questioning whether I can dive again now that this has happened. Since I was already cleared by a doc, I certainly did not expect it to happen and don't even know why it happened.