How does getting "bent" feel?

[mccaigk1]

What happens if you don't seek treatment? In severe DCS, a permanent residual handicap may result: this can be a bladder dysfunction, sexual dysfunction or muscular weakness, to name a few


interesting ummm, relating this to a relatively painless ( minor hit ) that is chalked up to fatigue or denied until syptoms arent resolved, can one expect ( statistically) that SD would result. I guess the short hand is, is this a common side-effect of being hit, has any-one ever actually heard of this as a result ( barring a severe case of DCS where more debilitating results occur, whatever would be more then that i cant imagine) or is this most likely some small percentage of a bent diver population that made it into a medical journal for the sake of thoroughness. Inquiring minds wanna know. Didnt tell us about this in Naui OW, i got certified through my college i doubt alot of my classmates would have taken the plunge so to speak if this was elaborated on j/k

kevin

 

[Papasmurf89]

Wow, pretty intersting about the denial part. Almost nailed what I thought, right on. Do you think I did have DCS? When it says that it often goes away after a while, does this mean that I should be okay if I did get DCS but it went away? I'm not going to make a habit of it I just would like to see if I should visit the doctor or not. It has been like 3 or 4 months.

 

[MoonWrasse]

Wow, pretty intersting about the denial part. Almost nailed what I thought, right on. Do you think I did have DCS? When it says that it often goes away after a while, does this mean that I should be okay if I did get DCS but it went away? I'm not going to make a habit of it I just would like to see if I should visit the doctor or not. It has been like 3 or 4 months.

If it's gone away, I'm not sure what visiting a doctor now would accomplish. Also normal doctors aren't generally aquainted with dive injuries, so you'd need to contact DAN or a specialist for diving.

More from the same article:
In some cases of neurological DCS, there mat be permanent damage to the spinal cord, which may or may not cause symptoms. However, this type of damage may decrease the likelihood of recovery from a subsequent bout of DCS.

Untreated joint pains that subside are thought to cause small areas of bone damage called osteonecrosis. Usually this will not cause symptoms unless there are many bouts of untreated DCS. If this happens, however, there may be enough damage to cause the bone to become brittle or for joints to collapse or become arthritic.

 

[miked]

Decompression Illness: What Is It and What Is The Treatment?
Symptoms of DCS

- Unusual fatigue

- Skin itch

- Pain in joints and / or muscles of the arms, legs or torso

- Dizziness, vertigo, ringing in the ears

- Numbness, tingling and paralysis

- Shortness of breath

Signs of DCS

- Skin may show a blotchy rash

- Paralysis, muscle weakness

- Difficulty urinating

- Confusion, personality changes, bizarre behavior

- Amnesia, tremors

- Staggering

- Coughing up bloody, frothy sputum

- Collapse or unconsciousness

Note: Symptoms and signs usually appear within 15 minutes to 12 hours after surfacing; but in severe cases, symptoms may appear before surfacing or immediately afterwards. Delayed occurrence of symptoms is rare, but it does occur, especially if air travel follows diving.

Denial and Recognition

The most common manifestations of DCS are joint pain and numbness or tingling. Next most common are muscular weakness and inability to empty a full bladder. Severe DCS is easy to identify because the signs and symptoms are obvious. However, most DCS manifests subtly with a minor joint ache or a paresthesia (an abnormal sensation like burning, tingling or ticking) in an extremity.

In many cases these symptoms are ascribed to another cause such as overexertion, heavy lifting or even a tight wetsuit. This delays seeking help and is why it is often noted that the first symptom of DCS is denial. Sometimes these symptoms remain mild and go away by themselves, but many times they increase in severity until it is obvious to you that something is wrong and that you need help.

What happens if you don't seek treatment? In severe DCS, a permanent residual handicap may result: this can be a bladder dysfunction, sexual dysfunction or muscular weakness, to name a few.

http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/medical/articles/article.asp?articleid=65

good list!

If I may add one more symptom-from personal experience-
vision "disturbances"- "double vision" -it does not look like they show it on old TV shows-rather you just see a jumbled mess of blurry images.

Take care,
Mike

 

[surlytart]

It's different for different people, but here's mine:

Raging beast of a headache the first night, almost immediately after the dive.
Bizarre upper abdominal pains - thought I got food poisoning. (Within a few hours)
Exhaustion. Utterly dragged out.
Stupidity. I couldn't think straight. Which meant it took me days to get into a chamber.
Roaming joint and mid limb pains varying from minor irritiations to enough to severely break my focus on anything but breathing through it.

My buddy had a slightly different set of symptoms, FWIW, on the same set of dives (but with slightly different mishaps.)

 

[MoonWrasse]

It's different for different people, but here's mine:

Raging beast of a headache the first night, almost immediately after the dive.
Bizzarre upper abdominal pains - thought I got food poisoning. (Within a few hours)
Exhaustion. Utterly dragged out.

Geez!
On my recent LAB there was a couple who were sitting out dives for because the claimed they had food posioning, which nobody else had from eating the food. They stayed in their cabin for over a day.
Hopefully they're ok.

 

[surlytart]

Geez!
On my recent LAB there was a couple who were sitting out dives for because the claimed they had food posioning, which nobody else had from eating the food. They stayed in their cabin for over a day.
Hopefully they're ok.

Oh, they're probably fine. It's just that it never progressed from 'almost unable to get up' into vomiting or something. Then I figured I'd overworked my abs at the gym, but later discovered that my buddy, who is in very good shape, had the same thing. It's marginally possible that it wasn't part of the package of symptoms, but it dovetailed too well with the experience of my buddy.

Were you somewhere tropical on your LAB? There are lots of bugs that could get you, and I'd assume that a couple is sharing germs...

 

[MoonWrasse]

Oh, they're probably fine. It's just that it never progressed from 'almost unable to get up' into vomiting or something. Then I figured I'd overworked my abs at the gym, but later discovered that my buddy, who is in very good shape, had the same thing. It's marginally possible that it wasn't part of the package of symptoms, but it dovetailed too well with the experience of my buddy.

Were you somewhere tropical on your LAB? There are lots of bugs that could get you, and I'd assume that a couple is sharing germs...

Likely they were fine, it's just that I never even considered DCS at the time.

BTW the only time I've gotten food poisoning there was after eating at Burger King or McDonalds. Go figure

 

[Papasmurf89]

Untreated joint pains that subside are thought to cause small areas of bone damage called osteonecrosis. Usually this will not cause symptoms unless there are many bouts of untreated DCS. If this happens, however, there may be enough damage to cause the bone to become brittle or for joints to collapse or become arthritic. [/I]

Awww...crap.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

If it's gone away, I'm not sure what visiting a doctor now would accomplish. Also normal doctors aren't generally aquainted with dive injuries, so you'd need to contact DAN or a specialist for diving...Untreated joint pains that subside are thought to cause small areas of bone damage called osteonecrosis. Usually this will not cause symptoms unless there are many bouts of untreated DCS. If this happens, however, there may be enough damage to cause the bone to become brittle or for joints to collapse or become arthritic. Emphasis added--jcr

That's not quite true. We had a pretty in-depth discussion of dysbarism-related osteonecrosis (asceptic bone necrosis) on a different thread under "Ask Dr. Decompression" some time age:

http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=96586

SeaRat