Panic?

[Adamastor]

I don't have much experience with panic.

The only full-blown panic case I've witnessed was during my DM training. I was assisting the instructor with a couple on their OW course. The goal of the dive was to practice mask clearing at 5m on a sandy bottom. The guy did his clearing quite well, but the girl struggled on her first attempt and used a ****-ton of air.
When the instructor asked her to repeat the exercise, her eyes went wide open and she bolted to the surface. I barely managed to catch up with her and slow our ascent so we wouldn't fly out of the water.

During the debrief, she said she was feeling uncomfortable with the exercise and remembers the instructor asking her to repeat it. Then her next memory was floating on the surface with me. Her mind literally went blank for a few seconds.

 

[Nemrod]

Wow, do I understand this right, you passed out underwater? You obviously survived... Why did you not surface? Too deep? Did your buddy bring you up? Was the reg in your mouth?

My regulator malfunctioned and I inhaled sea water. I could not go up because I had a laryngeal spasm which closed my air way. Had I gone up I would have embolized is my understanding at the time, I do not know if that is true but it is what I thought at the time of the event. Plus all of the commotion I had ticked into deco. No, my buddies were by that time out of sight. Yes, I had switched to my alternate but could not inhale or exhale. Yes, I passed out is my best recollection.

Believe what you want or not, as I (dreamed?) floating beside myself I decided I did not want to die, it was upsetting and very disturbing, I really have no words. Like a bolt of electricity passed through me and I came to and when I did my chest heaved inward several times and expelled the water mostly from my larynx and mouth. Some seawater evidently entered my lungs. Yes, basically, I drowned. I do not have a full memory of the event. I got pneumonia and it took two courses of antibiotics and two months to clear the pneumonia. I got the first course of antibiotics in Marathon, Florida and continued to dive. Upon returning home the pneumonia came back with a vengeance and my doctor did a chest X ray. He came running in and jabbed a shot in my arm and then prescribed a different antibiotic course. I got well.

A more simple explanation of the event is that it just turns out that I am hard headed and hard to kill. And then I went to Bonaire and did some more diving . That is my story more or less abbreviated. I tell it different ways because I really have no complete recollection.

 

[Fred Tagge]

Way back in the dark ages ('68) before SPGs were common my instructor taught us two things that have saved me several times over the decades.
The first one is that the first thing to do when the world turns brown is to think the word "PANIC!" so you won't. That one word is enough to remind you that that if you panic you drown. It is always much more work to panic and drown than it is to think it through and solve the problem and live. Spend up to 10 seconds evaluating the problem and solving it, then deal with the problem. Your brain translates "breathe" into "move air," and it doesn't care which way. If the worst part of the problem is that you are truly out of air and deep then just start up passive exhaling with an open airway. This used to be know as a "free ascent" and was taught at the "normal" end of a dive. The last time I checked it is now known as an ESA but is not practiced as part of a basic course. I know from experience this works from at least 138FSW even if by around 30FSW the thought passes through your head that the fish are getting oxygen out of the stuff around you.

The second one is that the time between the first "breathe" command and the non-panic throat convulsions is going to be about 15 seconds, and exhaling again there can restart the brain's "BREATHE!" clock. By the time the second one hits even a moderate swim rate to the surface will give enough "extra" air by your lungs residual air expansion to exhale again. You can swim a long way up in 15 seconds.

 

[happy-diver]

https://blog.fittodive.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Panic-Triangle-Guide-to-why-scuba-divers-panic.pdf

 

[blueskies_up_ahead]

That's an interesting point. I'm not sure, maybe someone with more knowledge can answer: does a laryngeal spasm block the airway in both directions (in which cas surfacing would indeed be a bad idea)?