I might have been bent....

[ArcTeryxMan]

Hi. I'm posting on the board because I suspect that I may have been bent a few weeks back. I'm wondering if I could get any advice on what my next steps should be.

3 weeks ago I did 4 dives over two days. My profiles are as follows

Saturday
Dive 1: 48 ft for 33 min
SIT: 2:30
Dive 2: 47 ft for 27 min

SIT: 18 hrs

Sunday
Dive 3: 35 ft for 35 min
SIT: 2:30
Dive 4: 48 ft for 22 min

On the 4th dive I remember I started developing a headache while we were swimming along the bottom. We surfaced and the headache got pretty bad. I suspect that I was dehydrated as the headache subsided when I drank some water. The trip home was uneventful and I went to sleep feeling pretty exhausted. The next morning I woke up with a headache as if I was hung over. Again I think this could have been due to a lack of water. I went for a walk with a friend to get some air and ended up smacking my hand pretty hard on a car side window. After the smack I started feeling some pins and needles in my legs. Weird! I went to bed that night and woke up the next morning feeling completely normal.

Throughout the week I felt fine.. No symptoms or feeling ill of any sort.

That weekend I did another set of dives, profiles follow

Saturday
Dive 1: 69 ft for 20 mins
SIT 3 hrs
Dive 2: 45 feet for 36 mins

I felt fine after these dives and made sure I drank TONS of water. I went home and got some sleep. The next day I had a slight headache and a slight pain in my left shoulder. I called DAN and they said that my profiles weren't suggestive of DCS and that the pain sounded more like it was muscle/skeletal. I got extremely paranoid and ended up calling DAN two more times to get the same answer. The shoulder pain has slowly subsided over the past two weeks but I'm not sure what to think at this point. I feel pretty normal.

Was I bent? I spoke with someone at DAN yesterday and he said that even if I was bent there's really nothing I can do at this point. It's been 3 weeks since the full weekend of diving and 2 weeks since Saturday dives. Should I avoid diving in the future? Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[HowardE]

I'm not a doctor, nor do I work for DAN... but it sounds like the headache is from over-exertion while on the bottom, and improper breathing (not fully exhaling on each breath) also referred to as "CO2 Retention".

The aches are probably from either diving in an unusual position for you, and/or carrying the tank around on your back.

Just my opinion.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

The dive profiles described are very benign, which implies a very low probability of DCS.
The shoulder pain is most likely musculoskeletal in nature. It's common to be sore the following day from having to schlep heavy dive gear around.

The headaches were probably caused by CO₂ retention, dehydration, or a combination of the two. Based on the onset of the headache during Sunday Dive #4, it's pretty clear that you were experiencing a significant amount of CO₂ retention. Decrease your activity level at depth (if possible) and focus on taking full breaths. Beginner divers still struggling with buoyancy control tend to make funny changes to their breathing (depth, rate, rhythm) which increase the likelihood of CO₂ retention.

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

Short shallow dives with relatively long surface intervals are not likely to be a problem.

As you know many of the symptoms of DCS are ambiguous with regard to their origin. Headache, and pain are DCS symptoms, but of course there are other ways to get headaches or pain.

Yes absolutely you should keep diving. But as a suggestion to relieve your concern study a dive table a bit more. Of course NDL limits are a fuzzy and not a sharp line, but you should know when you are far away from the limits so you can worry about other things. Depth, time, mix and surface intervals are the things to focus on.

 

[scubajim 1]

I must agree the profiles are all very conservative and it seems unlikely you had an undeserved DCS. I think you may feel safe resuming your diving and you might want to think about taking the DAN O2 provider course if you haven't already. You'll begin to learn a lot more about DCS and the symptoms.
To tell you the truth I worried about being bent when I first started diving (the glaciers were just starting to recede) but as I got used to our sport it troubled me less and less.

Having seen and treated DCS in the field I can tell you that when in doubt call DAN. Many folks who do get bent don't want to admit it either to themselves or others. But treatment usually resolved the problem. 100% O2 as early as possible for as long as possible and medical evaluation are the standard emergency treatment and if needed a course in a hyperbaric chamber.

Again you were wise to call DAN! When in doubt call.

 

[TSandM]

I agree with everybody else, that it is very unlikely this was DCS. But I empathize . . . when I was a new diver, I had some very worried moments! I can remember driving home from a dive once with such bad pain in my shoulders that I really though about calling DAN, even though the dive was so benign it really wasn't possible to have nitrogen-related problems. I think people underestimate the physical strain of walking around with 75 pounds of gear hanging from their shoulders!

I also agree with the suggestion that the headache was CO2 retention. Inefficient breathing is very common in newer divers, and although I didn't have CO2 problems as a newbie, I have had them when diving in high flow caves, and I felt absolutely HORRIBLE after the dive, with a horrendous headache and enough nausea that I wasn't sure I could eat lunch at all. If you went through your tank really quickly, that goes along with the diagnosis.

 

[ArcTeryxMan]

Thanks for all of your replies. It's quite reassuring to hear such things. I'm definitely a new diver having just earned my advanced certification with 10 dives under my belt. Monterey is a pretty unforgiving place to learn how to dive when conditions are gnarly.

C02 retention sounds very possible. On the dive down to 69 feet I burned through my air faster than I ever thought possible. We spent about 12 minutes on the sea floor and I used somewhere around 100 psi a minute. Talk about heavy breathing! Our safety stop was a bit screwy as we went up the anchor line to the boat. The waves overhead were making us go up and down while we tried to stay at 20 feet-- a futile effort.

Thanks again guys. What a great website!

 

[TSandM]

Yes -- you would think that breathing fast would get RID of CO2, but the problem is that rapid breathing is also shallow breathing, and only ventilates the upper airways where gas exchange does not take place. So you blow through gas without blowing off CO2. It's not at all uncommon for new divers, particularly if they are a little nervous. Work on a slower, rhythmic, slightly deeper than normal breathing pattern, and see if it makes things better.

 

[Dr Deco]

Hello ArcTeryxMan:

Strain and DCS

Hauling gear can cause problems. People get sore shoulders putting a large bag into the overhead storage bin in an airplane. Weights in dive gear are heavier than we normally might encounter, but more specifically, the activity is different. Different strains cause new pains.These gas loads were minimal, as others earlier have pointed out. Such could only give you some possible barotrauma [breath hold] incident from the dive itself but not long enough for nitrogen loading in tissues for DCS.

The headaches are probably carbon dioxide retention, as the other have mentioned.

DCS

Again, too much time has passed for DCS treatment. It would not be recommended anyway –the dives were too short.

It is always prudent to ask!

Dr Deco :doctor: