Hello everyone, been observing for awhile now love the site and have learned a lot.... quick question, the girlfriend and I did a dive over the weekend, spent roughly 30min at 25-30ft of water then descended to 60ft. We were only at 60ft for a couple of minutes as she hit the bottom of the lake and kicked up a bunch of mud and started to get panicked. At this point she inflated her bcd and started to go up, I grabbed her to try to slow her down in fears of DCS but was ultimately brought to the surface rather quickly with her....upon surfacing she never showed any signs of DCS which was my concern. Myself however the next day I was a bit fatigued, nothing crippling or overly painful just kinda a nag and general tired feeling... I called DAN just to be sure and was told not to worry about it because even with the rapid accent we weren’t at 60ft long enough to do anything. So I chalked it up to just me worrying and didn’t do anything. Three days after the incident I started getting some general aches and pains in my ankles in addition to the fatigue that never really went away. Once again nothing to keep me from going to work or anything but it just sits in the back of my mind.... anyhow lesson learned from this experience is I should have still done my safety stop and let her go to the top but too late for that now. Any general thoughts on this or should I just quit worrying about it? Thanks!
Heya first of all thanks for posting this. I know it takes balls to do so, putting yourself under scrutiny of fellow (internet) divers. So kudos to you!
In my opinion you did very well:
- You tried to arrest her ascend
- You stayed with her
- You realized something was off with you (maybe subclinical dcs) and you called DAN
- You are evaluating the experience and try to improve
That's already much more than an average diver would do! Let's break down.
- Arrested her ascend: Very hard to do, specially when she is actively inflating her BCD. Visibility wasn't that good... I can imagine by the time you started to stop her you are already passing through 30ft, and arresting someone who's BCD is now almost full... not easy at all. Already mentioned but you need to have a debrief with your girlfriend after everything has settled down. You need to get to know her side of the story, why did she panick (if she did), what triggered this... was it loss of visibility, cold, depth, generally feeling uncomfortable. Don't judge, just listen. With her context driven story, you can start reassembling what really happened and talk through how to do it differently. One big pointer is not to inflate the BCD excessively when trying to ascend but this was already pointed out... TALK!
- You stayed with her: IMO the main danger in this scenario wasn't DCS, but potentially barotrauma, specifically pulmonary barotrauma, which is very serious, even lethal. You staying with her, made sure that she had support on the surface. Yes we don't want 2 victims, but in this context (60ft with plenty of NDL) the right decision is to stay with her.
- Calling DAN: KUDOS! I've seen quite a lot of DCS cases, and the mental scenario is most of the time "this is not happening to me", "it's not DCS, I just hit my knee", even with quite serious cases, I've had the victim tell me, it's all alright, don't call the chopper. Realizing yourself that something is off, that you have flu like symptoms (general fatigue, sore muscles, etc) and that there might be a link to your ascend the previous day is incredibly smart. When in doubt call your physician (or DAN).
- You are evaluating: You are trying to learn from this scenario, and improve. Thanks for sharing!
Regarding your DCS (subclinical) case. Yes a rapid ascend could cause DCS in specific scenarios, did it in this scenario, it is unlikely but you will never know for sure, because there are too many variables. Could the ascend harm in other ways... for sure (barotrauma). Can DCS symptoms appear mildly and grow worse. Yes, normally onset is quite rapid depending (to use the old term on type), but symptoms can grow worse over time for sure. A good way to test if it is DCS related is to breath pure O² and see if the symptoms lessen, if that is the case there is a good chance that the symptoms you are experiencing are decompression related.
PS: I'm not a physician...I've just been around DCS cases unfortunately.
