After reading the original post, I was struck by the fact that the OP who suffered DCS was "embarrassed" by the event. I wonder how many divers do not seek help or treatment right away when they believe something is wrong due to the fact that they are ashamed because they feel they may have done something wrong.
Even the terms "undeserved hit" or "unexplained hit" make it sound as if divers shouldn't get bent. Should football players get hurt? The answer is, "No, football players shouldn't get hurt," but on any given Sunday check out the list of pro players who will be out due to injuries. How can they get hurt? They wear padding. They are physically fit. They stretch. They exercise. They have some of the best trainers and team doctors in the world looking out for their health? How can they get hurt? Because things happen to the human body when it is traumatized by forces acting upon it that cannot be controlled by protective equipment, fitness, diet, experience and training. When two 220 pound men collide at a full run, sometimes minor or major injuries will result. The latest injury bringing attention to football is brain injuries due to head trauma and concussions that occur over one's entire career. Sometimes injuries are cumulative.
For divers, unless we are playing Monkey Bash with diver propulsion vehicles, we aren't facing big guys chasing us down at high speed. In diving, rarely is the sport about man vs. man, but man vs. nature or man vs. himself. This applies to the ladies as well, of course. Scuba diving is defined as a "sport of vertigo" according to the text we used in my college Philosophy of Sport and Play course. In this sport, we have a few rules, but the rules, like in any sport, are not guaranteed to prevent injury.
For many years, DCS/DCI has been accompanied by a stigma that only divers who made mistakes became bent. It has been portrayed a sign of weakness, either in one's skill as a diver, or in one's physical body. Both of these may be true since many divers have been bent due to mistakes such as running out of air or due to a too rapid ascent, and others do have physical problems such as a patent foramen ovale, a hole in the heart allowing bubbles to shunt, but which is reparable. Multiple recurrent DCS hits may mean that a diver has a PFO. However, other divers do experience DCS/DCI and "decompression stress" despite doing many things right. We know that factors such as dehydration, fatigue, age, obesity, exertion, cold, etc., may aggravate DCS/DCI, but we also have learned that all of our tables, computers, decompression software, and ratio deco on the fly are all just "black magic." We understand that there is a relationship between nitrogen entering and exiting our tissues when under pressure, and that there is a relationship to more time spent on the bottom requiring more time to ascend to unload tissues. None of our tables, computers or theories has been proven and all from Haldane to bubble models are fraught with errors.
The deciding factor in what tables, computer algorithm, or decompression model or strategy is each individual. Some individuals have bodies that prefer certain gradients of pressure reduction to others. Some great divers are "deco weenies" and need to dive very conservatively, while most fit an average deco tolerance and will be happy with most tables, computers or dive planning software most of the time, while others are tanks and it is hard to bend them. There is conflicting evidence supporting this, some evidence showing DCS as random, while other studies support the idea that individuals always exhibit themselves as morte likely to be bent, average or less likely to be bent.
While some divers and agencies are making tables more conservative, divers who show a higher tolerance for aggressive gradients are making dives with less and less deco. Thanks to a more educated diving population, what science is learning about decompression is starting to come more from the trenches and less from the test tubes.
As such, it is time that DCS/DCI comes out of the closet, and without shame is considered a "sports injury" much the same way as a sprained ankle, a broken bone, or paralysis affects pro football players in the NFL. Something to be avoided, but if suspected, is something that should be shared with others as soon as possible and with the community later if one thinks others may benefit from the experience.
In this case, the OP did the right thing.
I, myself, have not always reported possible DCS hits. Not out of embarrassment, but out of laziness. A few weeks ago, I had what was most likely DCS after a 115 foot dive for 76 minutes. I exited the water, felt hot tingles all over and I felt like I was going to faint. I jumped right back in and descended to 20 feet for 25 more minutes of deco. I reached 10 feet and felt some tingles. I knew I might need help, so I flagged down a couple of instructors underwater from a dive center in Rochester, NY with my wetnotes. They provided me with lots of hydration and O2 at the ready as soon as I exited. I had drifted down the St. Lawrence from Casino Island to the Islander and exited there. A long exposure to cold, exertion at depth trying to unsnag a line in the current, and a big step up upon exiting with twin tanks and argon bottle could have exacerbated the hit. Upon exiting the second time I felt better. I had some issues with minor pain in some joints that evening, but fixed it with pepperoni pizza and lots of Coca-cola and a good movie. (As you can tell that was right out of the diver's medical guide - NOT!) I called DAN 72 hours later after the pain subsided and was given the classification of "decompression stress" which I figure is like a good jolt from a defensive back. But, instead of big guys in a defensive formation, divers battle tiny bubbles in any formation.
