New to the board seeking information

[theoldone]

I new to the board and am looking to find out how many other divers have experienced the same thing I did on my first dive in many years.

I had about three years of experience diving in the late 60's while in the Navy in Hawaii, needless to say the diving there is fantastic as I remember. After that it was lake diving with some diving in the gulf of Mexico in the summer.

Than a long break! 36 years to be exact.

Well on my first dive in the Gulf of Mexico, 63 degree water wearing a full wetsuit I experienced difficulty in breathing on my ascent from 60 feet at the end of the dive. By the time I reached the surface I had great difficulty in breathing. Gasping for breath and coughing up plem I was towed to the boat by my dive partner, administered o2. After about an hour I could breath fine and was no longer coughing. After about 2 hours I felt normal.

After returing and visiting my local doctor with some extra information I started searching the web and found that what I experienced was "immersion pulmonary edema." The articles I read said that this was extreamly rare but is it really? I read a thread from another on this site whos husband had also experienced this. Has anyone else seen or experienced this?

I'm looking forward to my next dive in a couple of months!

 

[jbd]

I new to the board and am looking to find out how many other divers have experienced the same thing I did on my first dive in many years.

I had about three years of experience diving in the late 60's while in the Navy in Hawaii, needless to say the diving there is fantastic as I remember. After that it was lake diving with some diving in the gulf of Mexico in the summer.

Than a long break! 36 years to be exact.

Well on my first dive in the Gulf of Mexico, 63 degree water wearing a full wetsuit I experienced difficulty in breathing on my ascent from 60 feet at the end of the dive. By the time I reached the surface I had great difficulty in breathing. Gasping for breath and coughing up plem I was towed to the boat by my dive partner, administered o2. After about an hour I could breath fine and was no longer coughing. After about 2 hours I felt normal.

After returing and visiting my local doctor with some extra information I started searching the web and found that what I experienced was "immersion pulmonary edema." The articles I read said that this was extreamly rare but is it really? I read a thread from another on this site whos husband had also experienced this. Has anyone else seen or experienced this?

I'm looking forward to my next dive in a couple of months!

You may find this article http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/full/120/5/1686 interesting if you haven't already seen it.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Welcome to the Board oldone. It's good to see another local here (I'm in Tucson). The wife of one of my former instructors had the same problem on several dives over a couple of dive trips. She went through extensive evaluation by several physicians. Diagnosis - immersion pulmonary edema. She never did find out why it just started happening all of a sudden. And the dives didn't have enough similar conditions to point to anything specific. The temps varied. The conditions varied. Then she went on another dive trip and guess what? No problems. Best suggestion is to dive very conservatively for a while and let your dive buddies know this can happen. Make sure there is O2 available.

P.S. We do quite a bit local diving (Phoenix area lakes). PM me if you ever fell like getting wet around here.

 

[theoldone]

I have already seen that article but thanks for pointing it out. Others who read this may not have seen it, I'm trying to bring some awareness to this and to see if others have encountered this problem and also how many others. Doesn't seem to be much discussion about it so maybe it really is kind of rare.

Mostly because a lady on the same trip experienced the same symtoms on a dive the day before. She attributed it to a panic attact underwater and came right back up. I think she may have had difficultity breathing which caused the panic attact. She also recovered in a short time and went on the next day to do another couple of dives with no problem.

Since we were using tanks provided by the same outfit there is always the possibility of air contamination. Who knows.

Thanks, Joe

 

[theoldone]

Glad to see that there have been no further problems. I use to dive in lakes in southern AZ a lot but like I stated it was 36 years ago. Do you dive in wet suits? Hows the visability now days? We never used a wet suit back then even thought I'm sure the water was cold. Most lakes are fed by melting snow, even in AZ. What do you look for? We used to pick up lost treasures like rod and reals, fishing lures etc. Not much else down there. I only own a full wet suit and have not purchased my own equipment yet but am starting to do some research on what the current equipment is like and what to look for. Joe

 

[Stirling]

Joe, I started SCUBA about 32 years ago in Tucson (I was a student at the UofA then), and we were always diving without wet suits. In fact, nobody I knew (except for instructors) owned one. I didn't realize how miserable we were until I finally got to wear one. I'm just saying that my old memories of places that I could dive without an exposure suit are not a useful guide to me any more - plus, over the years I have decided that I am less tolerant of being uncomfortable. (I also used to dive in Mexico without a place to stay, and slept outside on the pool furniture at hotels near the beach. I don't do that anymore, either!)

Welcome to the board. I am a recent member myself.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Glad to see that there have been no further problems. I use to dive in lakes in southern AZ a lot but like I stated it was 36 years ago. Do you dive in wet suits? Hows the visability now days? We never used a wet suit back then even thought I'm sure the water was cold. Most lakes are fed by melting snow, even in AZ. What do you look for? We used to pick up lost treasures like rod and reals, fishing lures etc. Not much else down there. I only own a full wet suit and have not purchased my own equipment yet but am starting to do some research on what the current equipment is like and what to look for. Joe

Joe, we dive wet in the summer (temp in the 70s with thermoclines as you go deeper) and dry from about October to April (surface temp 50). Viz ranges from 0 to about 30' depending on the lake and the time of year. Avg viz is 5-7' most places. We look for lost treasures and fish. Haven't seen much of either, but occasionally we get lucky. We do it mainly to get wet. PM me if you want some local advice or just want to get wet some time.

 

[Wildcard]

I read your post when it first came up and it made no sense to me????? The problem, not the post. I have been tossing it around in my head as to how this could happen.... Any chance your regulator is a hard breather? Seems I read that somewhere once. If you have to work to inhale, I can see this hapening. The post about the person that had it once and not again, Id like to know if they had the same reg and if the valve pressure was the same.....Just a thought.

 

[theoldone]

According to the articles that I have read there are several things that can cause this to happen.

To Quote Fred Bove, MD, PHD in his article "Pulmonary Edema: Shortness of Breath While Diving"
Quote:
"...intrinsic abnormality of the lungs, contaminants in the breathing air, abnormal blood pressure reactions to cold water, shifts of fluid into the lungs as a result of water immersion, and breathing against excess resistance in the regulator..."
End Quote:
(Here is the link to his articles on diving: http://www.scubamed.com/divmed.htm
This article is near the end of a long list of articles he has written.)

are some things that they think could cause this problem.

I'm not sure what could have caused my problem. I don't remember the regulator being difficult to breath with. But not having ever dived with a full wet suit, combined with the chest compression of the wet suit, I may not have noticed the difficulty if it was there. To me everything seemed normal. I was using a tank and regulator supplied by the diving tour. The wet suit was my own. I have a physical every year and am in good health. I'm not over weight but am near the upper limit for my height. I do physical labor several days a week so I'm not out of shape but again I'm not in great physical shape.

Hope this helps. Thanks for your reply Joe

 

[theoldone]

That is just what we did way back when, get wet find some neat stuff from time to time. Even raised a boat one time that sank (a small one). We got under it while it was upside down, and just filled it with air while breathing. Walked it over to shore and the owner was very happy! I remember the visablility being very good 25 to 30 feet most times as we could see the bottom in most parts of the lake while on the surface. The lakes were never over 70' deep.

thanks for the info, I'll let you know when I'm ready to dive again. I want to get my own equipment first.

Thanks, Joe