Newbie Panic

[okinawadiver]

Sorry this is a little long, but I wanted to show other newbies that no matter how comfortable you are after being certified you still need to take it slow, gain experience and be prepared physcially and mentally.

Since my last post... My son was born and I lost a brother in a car accident. Trying to get back to somewhat of a normal life I decided to finish my diving cert. The class work went very well and all the pool work built my confidence level. The first two dives were shore dives from a sea wall with easy access. Our max depth for those 2 dives was 35 feet. Everything went perfect. My confidence was really high by this point and I was very excited for the final 2 dives. When I got home I began to feel dizzy and light headed. I had some food and drank what seemed like a gallon of water. I was dehydrated, not sick enough to go to the hospital, but very close to having to.

What I should have learned from these dives... Even though everything went well, I didn't prepare my body for the dives. I was up late the night before with my son, I didn't hydrate myself properly and that morning I was in a rush to get out the door so I didn't eat breakfast. In addition, I didn't hydrate between dives or have a small snack. All of this lead to a bad after dive experience, not to mention that I was just lucky nothing happened in the water.

Dive 3-4. Unfortunately, just about the same scenario happened on these 2 dives. No hydration, no food, little sleep and rushed. Dive 3 went fine. Dive 4 went bad. We were at 50 feet and everything was going good. I was having trouble clearing my right ear all day but it would clear after a minute or less and I was able to continue descending. We were checking out the reef looking and looking at different things when my right ear had sudden pressure and it was painfull!! I panicked and instead of going up a couple of feet and getting relief and gathering myself I over-inflated by BC which took me to the top FAST!!! I had no intention going up to the surface but my panic made me forget that inflating my BC so fast would cause this. I did remember to keep breathing and tried to let the air out of my BC, but my reaction time was way to slow.

What I learned...Never panic when you have air. Asccend a few feet and give yourself a moment to get it together. The biggest problem here was that I was already begining to have a couple of other issues due to poor preparation. My mouth and throat were dry from being in the first stage of dehydration. I was at the deepest depth I had ever been and was a little excited and breathing a little erratically. With a dry throat and mouth I felt like I wasn't getting enough air but I was still doing relatively o.k b/c I looked at my gauges and saw that I had about 1800 left in air. But, when my ear didn't clear and the pressure took me by surprise I was unable to thinK rationally b/c I set myself up for failure.

The point I'm trying to drive home here is that you have to prepare you body as well as your equipment. All the best equipment in the world doesn't do you any good if your not prepared. Experienced folks feel free to add any additonal comments about what more, if anything, I could have done.

 

[DivetheRock]

Great advice. I always keep hydrated, diving or not. Also, I always try to take things extra slow the day of the dive - take my time to remember things for the trip, and the cardinal rules of diving. Diving is not like camping...you just can't stop on the bottom to pick up the things you forgot at home, or sit back and hydrate yourself, etc, etc.
I believe we could all learn from your experience.
Failing to plan is planning to fail, no?

 

[Ocean One]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I hope other new divers read and learn from your mistakes. Lik emost risky activities in life, you have to be focused on the task at hand and prepared physcally, mentally nad emotionally to deal with any emergencies. Better yet deal with them before they arise.
Deepest sympathy on the loss of your brother and sincerely glad you aren't going to be with him any too soon!

 

[laivindil]

I've had problems with dehydration my whole life. I passed out once because I stood up too fast and the docs at the hospital told me I was dehydrated.

Here's my pre-dive checklist;
1. 8 hrs sleep
2. hydrate the night before and the morning of the dive
3. breakfast with at least one item of animal protein


If I don't do one of these I don't dive. I usually drink water through the drive to the dive site.

Oh, and practice clearing your ear topside. At work, school, whatever. And I've had to figure out what position my head has to be in (straight up looking forward) to clear effectively. It helps.

 

[Cheekymonkey]

okinawa diver, thank you for the great post It serves as another reminder to newer divers, who sometimes take more out of a post like this than hearing their instructer babble about hydration.

 

[Diving Doc]

wow oki...that is probably one of the most informative and useful posts I have seen. Mind if I use it during training classes?

 

[Cheekymonkey]

Yea no kidding, thats the kind of thing they can use on the scubadiving website in the monthly problems where they break down a problem like that and put it out there for others to read.

The impressive thing is that as a new diver Okinawa diver sat down and worked through the whole situation on his own and came to very good conclusions, not to mention he posted it out here to a crowd that can somewhat be harsh, in an effort to help other new divers who might be undergoing the same problems, I think its wonderful.

I see what Diving Doc means, becasue things like this tend to mean more to students when they read it on their own or talk to someone like Okinawa diver on their own rather than hear their instructor just tell stories about it.

 

[Tigerman]

"Congratulations" on a learning experience you could walk away from.
You mentioned having problems with clearing, so Ill ad one thing that I havent seen mentioned here yet. Do you let water into your hood if/when you have problems clearing? Just lifting the hood out a little near your ear so you let a little water in to your ear might fix that problem quite effectively..

 

[Cheekymonkey]

Tigers advice is very good, it also doesnt hurt to practice equallizing at random times during the day very gently, just to get used to doing it without thinking about it. My course director used to tell his OW students that and I used to laugh, but it actually helps some new divers.