Diving Accident, Self-Responsibility and Balance

[raftingtigger]

For me, as an athlete all my life, I am out of shape. For the average 50 year old woman, I am, not.
Being fit and knowing your limits are essential in diving.

I have read "The Last Dive". Twice. Two experienced tech divers died, horribly. I am hoping that some here will understand that sometimes, sh*t happens that is unpredictable. I have read MANY accounts of otherwise extremely experienced and fit divers dieing or coming close to it. I hope you guys have some understanding that you too, could run into trouble. And I hope as well, you will understand that sometimes, we need eachother. And no one is to blame.

---------- Post added February 28th, 2014 at 07:21 PM ----------

I am good, and take none of it personally. Thank you so much though, I appreciate it.

Thea, Thank you for posting your horrible experience, and also for not letting some of the more insensitive posts get to you.

For all of you out there that think this can't happen to you... Well news for you - it can. All it takes is a moment of complacency, inattention, of just plain bad luck and you could be in Thea's or Quero's or (insert name of a diver you know/heard of who had an incident or accident)'s shoes.

Dive safe, drive safe, stay safe out there -- and have fun doing it

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Boy has there ever been a lot of back and forth about.. she panicked...she didn't panic... it helped...it didn't :doh: Seems the only thing everyone agrees on is that a good physical is needed.

Seems to me the various positions are entrenched enough and have been forcefully verbose enough that it may be best to agree to disagree. No-body on either side is going to change the other's mind! People reading the thread will gain valuable information and come to their own conclusions. The goal here is to learn and IMHO a person would have to be pretty dense not to have learned a lot here. For that we need to thank Thea for being willing to put her story out to us in as honest and open a way as she has. She has accepted the hits and criticism with more fortitude and grace than most new posters (and a lot of new members) can cope with. :worship:

Thea I would be interested in your take on the predive check. :blush: I will admit I have not been as consistent on this as I should on occasion. Some of my laxness came as a result of owning and Knowing my equipment and getting too complacent about it. Some came as a result of having my husband as my buddy and other very regular dive buddies whose equipment I "Knew". We have always been careful about testing "new or changed equipment" or when diving with someone other than our regular dive group buddies. It seems to me you dive with New Equipment every dive! What role if anything do you think equipment played in this. I know you mentioned dropping your weight belt but it hung up. You mentioned at some point (too lazy to go hunt up the specific post) something about having trouble figuring out how to inflate your BCD. IMHO it seems you did a lot of the right things and I wonder how much the equipment issues effected the event?

I think back to when I started diving and the impact some equipment issues had on me could have ended my diving "career" except that I had someone loan me good, well maintained equipment till I could buy my own. Even then I bought the wrong BCD and didn't realize what an impact that was having on my diving until I replaced it!

 

[Thea Strassburg]

I did have tunnel vision. All I could think about was AIR, I was starving for AIR. Here are the unadulterated facts, as I have weeded them out from my own rather dramatic original post and integrated all the thoughts expressed here:
1) I had no fear on the dive, my fear didn't come until I suddenly was on the surface and could not breath, nor have the strength to keep my head above the water;
2) I immediately signaled for help and two divers immediately responded;
3) It took 10-15 minutes to get me back to the boat. The DM and other diver did exactly as they were trained to do. Remind me to keep my reg in, start pulling me by my BCD and pushing my feet towards the boat;
4) After 10 minutes or so, the DM on the boat leapt into the ocean, swam to us, and a staff member pulled us to the boat. The surf was too strong to do it on their own;
5) I do not remember most of that 10-15 minutes, accept for releasing my weight belt and having trouble, being unable to inflate my BCD and chanting deep in my head, "do not panic, do not panic". Both the DM and my husband said I was completely still as we approached the boat;
6) I remember it took 3-5 minutes for the boat staff to get the O2 hooked up. I remember they put the mask on wrong, I remember they took that mask away, and replaced it with a bigger one, but still, it was not on correctly. I fixed that somehow;
7) I remember the DM banging on a tank shouting "surface! we have a medical emergency!:
8) I remember the DM saying the nurse would be at the dock, then later hearing him, distraught, say "the nurse won't be at the dock!", he was not talking to me;
9) I remember getting into the golf cart, rushing to the clinic, still air starved and panting;
10) I remember the front door to the clinic was broken, I remember the DM being REALLY PISSED that no one came out to meet us;
11) I remember the DM shouting "She could have bled to death by now! Where is the nurse!";
12) I remember they called for the doctor after seeing my BP was 140/180 and O2 was at 85%.
13) I remember the doctor coming in and repeatedly asking if I had asthma;
14) I remember my husband telling me later that the nurse freaked a little when she saw how blue my feet were;
15) I remember suddenly being able to breath again, and telling my husband "I am ok, it's ok!"

These are just facts. My husband, a wonderful, intelligent, no nonsense man with a memory like a steel trap.

I remember discussing all these things with the DM who saved me, other divers on the boat and the owner of the shop as we waited for our water taxi.
I remember crying. I remember my gratitude and shame at having caused all this fuss. I remember being so weak when we got back to our beach house that for the first time in my life, I needed help sitting up.
I have no motivation to lie. None of THESE facts are exagerated (again, my original post is embarrassing. Ugh).

ALL I hope for is that staff on a dive boat are comfy hooking up O2. It is so simple so inexpensive and even with the issues that day, life saving.
Gianaameri, you are incredible. You have actually read and thought about and analyzed a complete strangers terrifying incident and made remarkably accurate observations about MY OWN INCIDENT, I had not thought of before. Thank you so much, you have no idea how grateful I am.

I do though, also understand that divers MUST be responsible for themselves. So much is at stake when the **** hits the fan. I would rather die myself than have someone die trying to save me. I have learned A LOT here. Thanks all.

This is me on the trip. I am a smidge chubby, but no invalid: https://www.facebook.com/thea.strassburg

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Thea, Thank you for posting your horrible experience, and also for not letting some of the more insensitive posts get to you.

For all of you out there that think this can't happen to you... Well news for you - it can. All it takes is a moment of complacency, inattention, of just plain bad luck and you could be in Thea's or Quero's or (insert name of a diver you know/heard of who had an incident or accident)'s shoes.

Dive safe, drive safe, stay safe out there -- and have fun doing it

IMHO one of the most important comments every SB member who visits A & I should read. If we could lose Quero the way we did with her massive experience it can happen to anybody! Before we judge other's or get too rough on them here in A & I think of that .. read that then check your ego at the door and think "There but for the grace of God go I!"

 

[TSandM]

BTW, Thea, I just wanted to share that I did (actually had the temerity to LEAD) a dive in Southern California where we had a fair bit of surge. I was incautious and got too close to the wall, and the next thing I knew, I was on the surface! I had gotten too comfortable with surge, and hadn't realized that, when it hits a wall, it goes rapidly UP. I immediately redescended and rejoined my team (who had been smart enough to stay further away) and I learned something. So you are not the only person to have done an unintended ascent in surge.

 

[gcarter]

Please stop now. You two have punched each other bloody and now Gianaameri is on a bus.

How long is that bus?

 

[gianaameri]

Thea experienced a real event which caused her respiratory distress and which triggered the fight or flight response which in turn produces the behavior which she described.

Fight or flight response is different from what we get from the brain (endorphines...) when we do adventure sports, hunting, combat...

It is a different physiological state from stress, anxiety, hyperventilation, panic... we can even get at work.

Off to get my endorphine fix for the day.

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[fsardone]

Thea good morning,

Thank you for sharing. The most important thing abut these discussions is:
- Lesson identified (what we understand)
- Lesson learned (how we change our procedures and prevent this from happening again).

Ugh. My views and understanding of what happened have changed SO MUCH since I posted the above. I thought about deleting, it is so embarrassing.

Please don't. In my professional world we do have an entire organization that does mishap analysis and behavior study in high stress situation. The subject of analisys is not who (made mistakes / had the mishap) but the how and the why. The who is always appreciated for reporting and exposing his acts to improve the way we operate.

What happened first (medical emergency or panic) is moot once it is happened. What it is important is how you respond to it. I am going to quote myself:

It is in text books!
More stress increases the level of performance (physical and/or mental) to an extent variable from individual to individual. Passing that point the level of performance drops and we might have incapacitation or panic if the situation is considered risky ..... training moves the break point further up (stress management) and lower the amount of stress generated by events (learned responses and familiarity with situations) giving us the capability to handle more with reduced stress levels.

So you identified couple of lessons here:
-you need to assess your physical condition before diving again
-you need to learn about stress management to lower events to generate high stress evolving in panic

Overanalisys wont add much more ..... therefore you need to change the above in lesson learned:
-not going into water without a current physical
-not going into water if not fit for the dive
-get recurrent training
-self train yourself during every dive (the endo of it when you are done with the fun part and you have your spare air, do valve drills, buddy breathe controlled OOA ascent deploy SMB and the sort).

For me, as an athlete all my life, I am out of shape. For the average 50 year old woman, I am, not.

You do not need to be a triathlete to do sport diving, being able to walk/run a couple of miles and climb 3/4 stories without ending up out of breath should be enough. More important is the mental conditioning (discipline) to face situations that diving will throw at you.

I have read "The Last Dive". Twice. Two experienced tech divers died, horribly. I am hoping that some here will understand that sometimes, sh*t happens that is unpredictable.

Ok, that is exactly my point: learn from others' mistakes (and yours in this case) as I am doing. I am a tech diver my self and I really like to dive deep: in most of my dives after 5 minutes going direct to the surface would mean a serious medical emergency which means that the instinctive response (go to surface) would be BAD. So training gave me a different conditioning.

You need to recondition your brain that adapted to live on the surface, to correctly respond to an emergency underwater with the correct learned response maintaining a low stress level and AVOIDING PANIC.

Here I wish to state it again PANIC KILLS It is not what generates panic (unless it is a catastrophic event: loss of limb in the mouth of a great white shark) that usually kills you but you response (or lack of it for the matter) to it.

Let me state it again in bold for those believing that panic and instincts help PANIC KILLS!

Hope this discussion helps to get you back in the water every one with a few dives under his/her belt had his moment of truth and (if survived) either learned to be e better diver or stopped diving. How it ends is on you and the diving professional that will help you get through it.

Cheers

Fabio

 

[Greenjuice]

Thea experienced a real event which caused her respiratory distress and which triggered the fight or flight response which in turn produces the behavior which she described.

and the question is whether that was an inevitable chain of events or whether it could have been modified during the course of development to change the outcome?

Fight or flight response is different from what we get from the brain (endorphines...)

a different experiential factor, but largely discounted now. If you are doing internet searching, try digging deeper...

Off to get my endorphine fix for the day.

Or endocannabinoids ... another controversial topic ... Enjoy!


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---------- Post added March 1st, 2014 at 10:56 AM ----------

If you are doing internet searching, try digging deeper...

Apologies. In my haste to reply, this came out as rather rude and aggressive, which was not my intention.

The challenge in neurosciences at this time is in explaining high level experiences like pleasure, attraction, disgust and panic through low level chemical signalling through the neurotransmitter pathway building blocks. It may work from a top down approach, but not reliable at this time from bottom up.

Many high level experiences share these same building blocks. Endorphin release has been implicated in a wide range of experiences including giving to charity, paying taxes and eating chocolate. The bottom up approach is flawed because there are likely to be so many other factors (some known, probably many more unknown) which come into play.

To draw an analogy, using the very British 'cup of tea', from which we derive so much pleasure at the end of a hard day. A scientist may well identify some chemical ingredient in the tea which will result in the correct chemical signals of dopamine in the pleasure centres of the brain. But what is missing in this bottom up approach are the answers to other questions like why this might not be as pleasureable in other cultures, why the second cup of tea is less pleasure inducing, why when the tea is infused directly into the stomach through a tube there may be no pleasure at all.

To challenge the bottom up approach, it is often useful to ask a top down question. Like I did about whether or not it was an inevitable sequence of events as the story of this dive unfolded. It was a rhetorical question. I suspect we all believe the events could have been modified.

Therein lies another interesting neuroscience challenge, which is to determine whether as a species we are unique in being able to control/modify these low level chemical pathways which are common to all mammals. Using the example of 'runners high', now thought to be due to endocannabinoids, these pathways have been detected in humans and dogs, but not ferrets(!).

I think the bottom up approach is reasonable up to a point when looking at their effects on basic physiological processes like blood pressure, respiratory rate and peripheral shutdown. Less reliable when you want to go all the way up to determining behavioural experiences like pleasure and panic.

 

[gianaameri]

Greenjuice,

I went through what Thea went through which is why I undestand it.

No Wikipedia or Internet searches.

We are coded to go into fight or flight response and there is no stopping it, same as you can't stop your heart beating.

Rather than discussing how to avoid it (impossible if you are in respiratory distress especially umderwater), it may be more interesting discussing what configuration might be more helpful when it happens.

It is unlikely you'd be capable to carry out anything complex other than continue breathing the gas you already have from the reg. in your mouth and continue kicking.

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