Diving with an injured rib

[miketsp]

My wife cracked 2 ribs when she slipped on a dive boat on the 4th day of a 10 day trip. This was in rough weather and she fell hard backwards onto the corner of a wooden crate.
As TSandM stated there are dangers and we were aware but despite the pain there was no way she was going to miss the rest of the week's diving.
So we strapped her up and took extra care for the rest of the holiday with her equipping and un-equipping in the water and taking care with the profiles.

About 1 year later she had an x-ray for something else and the doctor asked about the fracture points because they were really solidly calcified. Much more than normal.

 

[fjpatrum]

Personally I would probably skip diving, but when I had bruised/broken ribs I couldn't take a deep breath. If you can breath normally I would say you're probably okay to dive but I'm no doctor.

 

[TSandM]

One warning about strapping! We used to do this for rib fracture patients, to help ease the pain, but it is no longer done, because strapping the ribs increases the incidence of pneumonia. In addition, in diving, you could conceivably encounter a situation where you might need to exercise hard (hitting a rip current, for example) and strapping will significantly hamper your ability to do that.

 

[MarkusEgger]

I think my case is not bad at all. Like I said: "thanks" to my ice hockey playing, I have a wide range of rib injuries to compare this to (from bruised - which is the worst I think - to cracked to broken) and this is more of a nuisance. I do not even know if pain killers would help,because I have not taken any.