Teenager with DCS, mother in denial, treatment delayed

[Kensei]

There’s almost no way he does. Doubt they thought DCS was a big enough risk, as we can tell from his mom’s post.

Yeah, I agree. It's amazing to me how cavalierly these people treated the risk of diving. I'm now curious if he actually went through a formal course or he just learned from a relative. It's as if their son was playing tennis and his elbow started hurting.

 

[Marie13]

Trying to get inside the mother’s thought process during this situation? Not going to happen for me.

 

[formernuke]

Trying to get inside the mother’s thought process during this situation? Not going to happen for me.

Me either. Minor pain I could see ok lets see chiropractor or wait etc. But he was paralyzed and both of them were like ok lets wait and see if it goes away. I hope he recovers but with the delay that is less likely then if they would have gone for immediate treatment.

 

[Kensei]

There's an element to accident analysis that suggests we try to put ourselves in the mind of the person involved and ask "Why did it seem reasonable at the time to do that?" As opposed to simple blamestorming with the benefit of hindsight. In this case, it seems difficult. But that doesn't mean we can't stretch our imaginations in the interest of accident analysis.

p.s.: not disagreeing with anything you said; just hoping to get us back on track

At one point I was trained as an EMT and involved mostly in mountain rescue scenarios although I had a few roadside incidents. I've seen how civilians react to medical emergencies in remote locations. Sure, they make mistakes, but it's easy to understand their thought process under stress and why they made the decisions they did. There was no criticism of their response since they were doing the best they could given the stress and their medical knowledge level. They always did their best to get help ASAP, even if that meant ending the trip immediately.
But what this mother and father did makes very little sense, even when I try to put myself in their shoes. I've personally never seen this type of response to such debilitating symptoms, but maybe I just didn't work in the field long enough.

 

[ginti]

Yep, I agree with this, and I do try. As I said earlier, I'm really struggling with understanding the thought process in this case.

To me it seems like they really do not trust official services, since they didn't call EMS straight away and even went to a chiropractor before going to doctors. I may be well wrong obviously.

Why did they do recompression? If they aren't so experienced, maybe they just misunderstood the basic principles of human physiology underwater and thought that recompression could help with any symptoms caused by diving.

However, the only way to know for sure is to ask them...

when checking for efficiency of something like chiropractic interventions, you can do worse than starting with meta analysis and the Cochrane foundation:

Combined chiropractic interventions for low-back pain

www.cochrane.org

The definition of chiropractic is quite different from the one in Wikipedia, but the results are exactly the same.

An interesting part:
"...there is currently no evidence to support or refute that combined chiropractic interventions provide a clinically meaningful advantage over other treatments for pain or disability in people with low-back pain..."

However, the definition of chiropractic in the website of the world chiropractic organization is closer to the one in Wikipedia:
Définition de Chiropratique.

​

If you agree with their definition, it is pseudoscience according to basically anyone (both on Wikipedia and on Cochrane)​

 

[Belzelbub]

To me it seems like they really do not trust official services, since they didn't call EMS straight away and even went to a chiropractor before going to doctors. I may be well wrong obviously.

That's a possibility. In some cases, depending on location, it may be preferable to wait until getting to a better location as the local hospitals may not be equipped. That's not really the case in this area.

I agree with the title of this thread, some extreme denial may be at play here. Despite all the flags, they still clung to the notion that it was something other than diving related.

Why did they do recompression? If they aren't so experienced, maybe they just misunderstood the basic principles of human physiology underwater and thought that recompression could help with any symptoms caused by diving.

That's the strange part. I'm not sure they are quite so inexperienced. I searched the kid's name to see if there were any local news stories about this. There weren't, but since EMS wasn't called immediately, it's understandable why there aren't any stories I found.

What I did find, though was reference to the kid winning one of the local spearfishing tournaments. That generally doesn't happen for inexperienced divers.

 

[ginti]

What I did find, though was reference to the kid winning one of the local spearfishing tournaments. That generally doesn't happen for inexperienced divers.

Well, I agree with you, it is strange.

However, it is my personal belief that understanding well decompression issues require lots of experience and, possibly, a bit of this experience should be about tech diving. The point is that deco is not fairly treated in rec-diving courses.

Now, I have no idea how difficult spearfishing tournaments are (here in Europe spearfishing with SCUBA equipment is illegal, at least in some countries), is it fair to assume that they don't require advanced knowledge of decompression theory?

 

[rob.mwpropane]

It's interesting watching this unfold. The only experience I have is with kids, zero w/DCS or even watching someone take a hit. Of my 4 kids, 2 are overlie dramatic. If one of them was complaining about a level 10 pain, I know it's more like a 3-4 because everything to them is a 10. On the contrary the other 2 tend to hold it in. If they say it's a 3-4 I know it's more like a 7 because they're just different.

I've actually had my 15 year old say he was sore after a dive and thought it might be DCS (because he just took the class).. we were in 30' water for 30 min, lol.

If you were to take out the fact that they tried the IWR I can 100% see the possibility that the mother just didn't know enough, the son maybe is a little more inverted then you'd like.... you can see that. But the IWR is really puzzling. Without the IWR it's just ignorance. Some symptoms caused them to think that was necessary, but then they pretended or forgot that was ever a thing after they got back, all the while the symptoms getting worse... wtf? That part doesn't add up at all.

 

[tridacna]

Look up actual definitions then get back to me.

Sorry. You’re way out of your depth here. I think that it’s you who has to do some research. Am I really having this argument?

 

[formernuke]

Sorry. You’re way out of your depth here. I think that it’s you who has to do some research. Am I really having this argument?

True homeopathic is using natural rather than synthetic drugs.

This has been warped by quaks most of them just looking to make a few bucks.

True homeopathic is simply using natural cures, raw honey, aloe straight from the plant etc. Some do actually work. In fact some modern drugs are based on natural treatments at least one other dates back to BC times.