I said:
"If every time a student has some blood in his mask"
and:
"A little blood in the mask is nothing to worry about, if it isn't acompanied by pain. Noses tend to bleed from time to time, aspecialy when you are using dry, compressed air. "
But you isnsisted on understanding:
And yet you're perfectly comfortable turning around and telling your customers, your students, the 2294+ registered members of this board, and who knows how many other readers that when you surface with a mask full of yellow foam and blood and are virtually certain that you've already suffered a barotrauma there's absolutely no concern with continuing diving until you have pain.
All I said, is that having a little bit of blood in your mask(which most of the times the student is unaware of, untill he takes his mask off on the surface and someone says "Hey, you've got some blood in that bogey), is VERY frequent, aspecialy in hot areas (which naturaly, most tropical diving sites are located at), and that canceling a diving vocation becouse of it, is many times unnessacery. I dont think I know any diver with over 100 dives that never once bleeded a bit. usualy it is becouse of the dry air and hot suroundings. I will never tell someone with orange foam to continue diving! I will send such a case to a doctor, though I do know a guy that has TONS of orange foam every dive, and is used to it, though it quite frightens me to see it.
You are saying that a diver should never use a decongestant when they dive (without a doctor's direction) in the off chance that they metabolize the drug grossly abnormally and its effects wear off much sooner than expected. The reason for this admonition is because if they're one of these strange metabolizers they might suffer a barotrauma, from say a sinus squeeze, and that would be absolutely unacceptable.
I saw in your profile that you are a surgeon, so I take it that you are not a divng/HBO specilaist, and that most of your knowledge conserning diving is from being a diver yourself, and reading about it here and there. Well, my PRACTICAL knowledge, considerning diving, as an instructor, might be a bit larger than your own, and I have probobly seen more cases of diving maladies happen in reall time than you(plus I do know some HBO doctors, and HBO operators that i used to dive/work with).
What happens, is that people tend to take drying drugs before diving. sometimes several hours before it, and not alwais a 12 hour dose. Than they go dive, the drugs affect wanns (and high pressure of air can some times make this prosses faster) during the dive. when time comes to ascend, suddenly, during the ascent they feel quite a nasty pain in their sinuses, and can't ascend becouse of the pain. only they have to. a severe case of sinus block happens, and when they will surface, their mask will be filled with bload, foam and bogeys, not mentioning the pain they mast go through in order to reach the surface.
So , what I say about this, is that if you need this kind of drug, or any other drug for that matter, and you plan to dive-go see a DIVING doctor that will recomend you on the best solution for your problem. As a none-doctor myself, I will never take the responsibilty of suggeting medications to others. A large problem with medications and diving, is that higher pressure couses medications to have side affects and other implications (like speeding narcossis) that were not thoroughly researched.
About the last paragraphs of your message-I agree with these, ofcourse. I only said that you do not need to force someone to quit his course/vocation becouse he had a drop or two of blood in his mask. And like I said above- I will not recomend anything about drugs to a diver, you are a doctor, you know about drugs, I am not, so I keep myself out of that field completly.
