So nauseated

[salt_in_my_hair]

First open water dive in Mazatlan yesterday. In retrospect I should have known better. I had only dove in a pool for fun in the past and loved it so I wanted to give it a try with this shallow intro.

I will try to keep it brief but basically I had nausea yesterday that lasted almost 12 hours after the dive. This morning the nausea is gone and appetite is back. I have no idea it it could be related or not but a few nuckle joints are sore this morning. I really want to get certified at home but not if this is how it's going to be.

It was shallow, max 25 feet. First dive was 10 minutes no problem. We ascended to get the the rest of the group and 10 minutes into the second dive I started feeling nausea and vertigo. The nausea was severe upon surfacing, there would have been vomiting if my stomach was not empty.

After returning to shore the vertigo improved but I was nauseous for almost 12 hours yesterday. Meclizine did not help.

not sure how much to add but here are some other details.

no headache

I am prone to motion sickness but never for hours after the incident.

no one else in the group felt ill

I had buoyancy issues the instructor had to put rocks in my pockets as I kept floating away.

My right ear felt almost like there was water in it all day yesterday.

 

[Suppresst]

try Metoclopramide twice daily before meals on dive days

 

[Scraps]

Salt in your hair and rocks in your pockets,


Others who know more than I do about physiology will weigh in on your symptoms.

I'll just say I'm sorry your dive didn't go well and suggest you back off a bit, maybe work on the buoyancy issues in a pool before you go back to open water.

Lots of divers struggle with their first dives, then figure it out and learn to love it.

One thing that doesn't help is trying to tough it out when you don't feel well and aren't having fun. You want to be comfortable and confident before you take each step.

Hope it works out well for you.

 

[JohnN]

try Metoclopramide twice daily before meals on dive days

A novel diagnosis for someone complaining about vertigo induced nausea.

Would you like to expand on your suggestion?

 

[M-Cameron]

so cold water in the inner ear can cause vertigo.....since you reported feeling water in your ear that could be the culprit

personally ive only experienced it once, and it was from a pool dive, the trippy reflection of the light on the pool gave me vertigo and the nausea lasted a day or so then eventually cleared.


this is what caused it for me...hasnt happened since though.

 

[Seaross]

A novel diagnosis for someone complaining about vertigo induced nausea.

Would you like to expand on your suggestion?

better than telling a new diver salt_in_my_hair they had been poisoned by gas or an embolism or a mental disoder,concerning brain or ears
quite possibly a compressor in mazatlan, which has a history of contaminants

I don't think anybody would appreciate that kind of comment and I would hope they would investigate if the diver reported those symptoms to the dive operator.

"i have felt same way snorkeling could have been hypercania, could have just been the waves
and sea conditions,

My mental condition lol "In love with the ocean and the insanity of diving" I am sure there are quite a few other loonies of that sort on this board.

get educated https://www.scubaboard.com/community/members/salt_in_my_hair.515119/

diving is a fun sport but there are inherintant risks, some you may not want to take with your life.

 

[salt_in_my_hair]

Thank you ☺ I definitely needed one more weight on my weight belt, pretty sure he guessed and mine was inadequate for sure.

I'm not ready to give up but won't dive again until I've been properly trained.

Salt in your hair and rocks in your pockets,


Others who know more than I do about physiology will weigh in on your symptoms.

I'll just say I'm sorry your dive didn't go well and suggest you back off a bit, maybe work on the buoyancy issues in a pool before you go back to open water.

Lots of divers struggle with their first dives, then figure it out and learn to love it.

One thing that doesn't help is trying to tough it out when you don't feel well and aren't having fun. You want to be comfortable and confident before you take each step.

Hope it works out well for you.

 

[Zef]

It is hard to know exactly what afflicted you as there are details that can not be fully ascertained form your description....such as did you arrive at the dive site by boat, did the boat anchor, did you inhale diesel fumes at any time before or after the dive if you went by boat, did you have problems equalizing your ears? did you suffer any barotrauma from difficulty equalizing? Did you descend uncontrollably? Did you ascend uncontrollably? When arriving at the surface did you hangout there for an extended amount of time? How long? what was the sea state when you returned to the surface? Did you swallow sea water? If this dive was by boat did it linger without the engine engaged for any length of time from the time you climbed back aboard? Did the air in your cylinder have a taste and/or odor? Were you swimming into a current during the dive? Were you swimming into a current at the surface? Were you suffering from congestion, a cold, ear infection, or other illness leading in the days or weeks leading up to dive?

Any one or combination of any or all of the above could have contributed to your nausea.

Some other questions: What instruction did you get prior to this discover dive? What skills were discussed/reviewed/demonstrated/expected of you?

I would recommend taking a full cert course with a quality instructor and learn the diving related skills properly. Master the skills in a pool, do your checkout dives in calm conditions and see how things go.

My wife suffers from terrible motion sickness. She uses a device called a "Relief Band" when traveling to and from dive sites. It is a watch like bracelet that provides a short phased electric shock to the wrist. The intensity of the shock can be adjusted. The device helps her tremendously with preventing/minimizing motion sickness. One cannot wear the device in the water, but it works to great affect before and after dives.

-Z

 

[salt_in_my_hair]

Thank you for your reply.

And I will start by saying I know better than to do a random dive uncertified. I won't be diving again until I've had proper training.

Yes we rolled around on the boat as he went over how to use the equipment, some basic hand signals, how to do mask clearing, pairing up and how to share air.
I admittedly was not feeling great to begin with because of this which was no surprise based on my motion sickness history. I felt great great during my first 10 minute dive. It was during the second dive that I rather quickly felt terrible. Upon surfacing I was miserable, my sister said I looked green lol. Tbh I swam off and tried to vomit.

It really sucked to be feeling so ill for the entire day and not typical of my motion sickness. We were back on shore by 10 am and I was still feeling sick at 8 pm.

I felt miserable before i climbed back aboard.

No taste to the air

No cold or congestion

I didn't seem to have issues equalizing my ears

Did not hang out long on the surface

Did not drink ocean

had trouble initially descending due to being too buoyant

May have ascended too quickly also due to being too buoyant

very briefly there were diesel fumes

I would say the current was pretty mild, we were not getting pushed around too much

 

[Zef]

snip

Here are some thoughts...often a little bit of motion sickness can be exacerbated by various contributing factors...I am not an expert on motion sickness but in my experience I have found that it is cumulative meaning for example that experiencing a little bit of motion sickness on a boat ride to a dive site will stay with the body and have a dramatic affect later on compounded by other factors as you experienced.

Motion sickness is often associated with the ears. I find that I have the most problems with my ears if I dive for a period of time and ascend to the surface for a short period and then re-descend....this causes me problems with my ability to clear my ears and often causes mild barotrauma if I am not careful which leads to a feeling of fullness in my ears not long after the dive as if my ears are clogged with water. For some this feeling can instigate vertigo.

Another aspect that can instigate vertigo which can lead to nausea is the lack of visual reference caused by being on the surface, as well as any lack of visual reference during any part of the dive. My wife hates doing dives where she cannot see a solid bottom and hates what I would call blue water dives where one is swimming into what can be described as the abyss. It not only causes her anxiety but it causes her problems with spatial perception, leading to headache and nausea.

Motion sickness is often caused by a difference between the signals your eyes send to your brain and the signals your brain receives from the semi-circular canals of the inner ear. If you were inside the boat instead of outside, if you were reading or messing with a dive computer, or even just sitting talking to someone while looking at them, this could cause motion sickness.

Not being used to the environment could have impact as well. For instance, if you normally experience motions sickness in a car, but have rarely or never been on a boat, the type and inconsistency of motion on a boat is very different than motion experienced terrestrially....on/in a boat one has pitch, roll, and yaw....yaw is often the killer, but the boat will move in each plane as well as combinations of planes that can have a devastating affect on the motion sick afflicted.

Anecdotally, I spent 20 years in the US Navy and was only motion sick once....I was the search and rescue boat officer for our ship. We had a suspected man-over-board one night while doing an exercise off the coast of Virginia. It was about 22h00 (10pm), dark, raining, and 5 to 8 foot seas. We launched the RHIB and about 100 yards from the ship we lost all ability to steer. There turned out to be a leak in the hydraulic steering system and without hydraulic pressure we could not steer the boat. We were sitting out there just getting tossed around like you could not imagine. After about 30 minutes of this I lost my cookies and never recovered. I remember kneeling in the bow of the boat with radio in hand as I alternated between dry-heaving, giving status reports to and discussing with the bridge of the ship how we would be recovered, and just plain praying to god to make it end. Eventually the ship, maneuvered in such a way so that we would crash into her side and then slid along her while retrieving lines to secure the RHIB and hook up to the davit (a crane type device) to hoist the boat and my crew back aboard. It was quite a number of hours before I felt myself again. In the end no one had fallen overboard, my boat crew functioned extremely well despite myself and our signal man being fairly incapacitated, and I briefly became very religious.

I welcome you hardily to the world of scuba diving and I wish you luck and hope that your bought with motion sickness is something that you will be able to control as diving is a wonderful pastime if you are able to enjoy it.

-Z