Personal experiences of DCS - poll

[scawt]

Right elbow pain after a 300'er on a conservative profile. Had dove that profile before win no I'll results. Breathed o2 on the 5 hr ride home and symptoms went away.

 

[Crowley]

Time for the old quote:

If you ask the average joe on the street what causes the bends they will say "I don't know"
If you ask the average diver what causes the bends they will say "too much nitrogen"
If you ask a dive professional what causes the bends they will talk about half times, compartments, theoretical tissues and M-values
If you ask somebody who spent their whole life researching decompression sicknesses "what causes the bends", they will say: "I don't know".

 

[tstormdiver]

Sure wish you had something there for the subclinical DCS symptoms of extreme fatigue, tiredness, sleepiness . . .

I'm 99% certain this has happened to me when doing OW evaluations with students from all the ups & downs that I must do when the students must do their emergency ascent skills. I find that diving Nitrox helps with this some.

I don't really know how to answer. The first time I went to Nanaimo was the first time I dove a deep (100 fsw) square profile. That night, I had several odd-looking pink-purple stripes on the back of my left shoulder. They looked a little like bruises, but they were gone in the morning. They did not itch, and I don't know whether I had a very minor skin bend or not. (I did a good minimum deco ascent with no control issues, and did not exceed planned bottom time.) I have since done extra deco time when I do deep, square profiles, and have never had anything like this. I should mention that I stood for quite a while with doubles on before the dives.

This one's a little tougher. I sometimes tend to dive with considerable squeeze on my drysuit, mostly because I either must wait until I get to depth to put air in my suit (hands are tied up) or when I first started diving doubles, I've had some uncontrolled descents. I know sometimes I get some bruising on my shoulders, upper back & chest, but sometimes I wonder..........

 

[TSandM]

Yeah, I really don't know what the marks on my shoulder were. They were a strange color, and they were not bruises (because true bruising doesn't resolve overnight). They didn't itch, and I have never had marks like that again, despite other dives where I stood with doubles on for long periods of time. The one thing that was really different about that dive was that it was a deep, square profile, which is unusual for me.

 

[Tortuga68]

I polled option 6

I wasn't on the dive, but someone I have dived with got bent and went to the chamber on a 75m deco dive. Said he could feel it during the ascent, like his stomach "was jelly and not part of him". Chamber operator said it was type II, IDK. Don't know what schedule or how many rides he took. Three other divers on the same dive/profile (square) had no symptoms, and I've done the same dive/profile (decoplanner) myself several times without any problems

FWIW the guy who got bent had been out the night before and only had a coffee before the dive. So IMHO dehydration was at least partly to blame

He recovered fine after the chamber treatment and has done similar dives since without any recurrence

Two other people I have dived with have also been bent, but I'm not sure of the circumstances - I believe they were NDL rec computer dives

 

[FritzCat66]

I also have seen a "probably DCS type II-related" hit that, sadly, ultimately resulted in the death of a fellow ScubaBoarder, documented in this thread.

I qualify it because, while yes there was an embolus after diving, there turned out to be some mitigating factors (e.g. undiagnosed cancer) that may have strongly predisposed the victim towards clotting.

Nevertheless, the experience I had of sitting right next to a dive buddy, one minute chatting about the day's two dives, and the next minute seeing him laid out on the deck on oxygen is one I am not likely to forget.

If nothing else, I am now acutely aware of the need for having some sort of ID and in-case-of-emergency contact numbers physically on us divers - not in the car, not in your gear bag, not on your cellphone, but ON YOU.

For lack of that information, this diver's family couldn't be contacted until it was too late, so they did not get to see him before he went, and that will always haunt me.

 

[TheCanuck]

Do massive air embolisms count in your definition of DCS?

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

Do massive air embolisms count in your definition of DCS?

It is unfortunate that there does not seem to be entirely uniform usage on the terminology. But most commonly:

DCS (decompression sickness) is due to bubbles formed from dissolved inert gas in tissues and veins.
CAGE (cerebral arterial gas embolism) is due bubble introduced into arterial circulation due to pulmonary barotrauma.
DCI (decompression illness) is inclusive of DCS and CAGE.

Embolisms fall under CAGE and DCI, but not DCS.

Lippmann, and Mitchell's "Deeper Into Diving", and the NOAA Dive Manual have good discussions of this, as does the DAN website.

 

[TheCanuck]

It is unfortunate that there does not seem to be entirely uniform usage on the terminology. But most commonly:

DCS (decompression sickness) is due to bubbles formed from dissolved inert gas in tissues and veins.
CAGE (cerebral arterial gas embolism) is due bubble introduced into arterial circulation due to pulmonary barotrauma.
DCI (decompression illness) is inclusive of DCS and CAGE.

Embolisms fall under CAGE and DCI, but not DCS.

Lippmann, and Mitchell's "Deeper Into Diving", and the NOAA Dive Manual have good discussions of this, as does the DAN website.

I voted no experience with DCS because I was thinking skin rashes, joint pain, nausea, head aches and the the such, but if you extend the original question to DCI, then yes, I have experience with it. My dad passed away in 2007 from CAGE due to a rapid ascent from 95ft diving near Brockville

 

[FritzCat66]

Good points; I was thinking of DCS II as being inclusive of AGE, which is definitely what got littlejohn.