the tail of a caustic cocktail

[Doppler]

Diving off Milwaukee this past week and had several new experiences... Most excellent and fun; one less so but hugely educational.

As you'll know from reading, and I hope not experience, a caustic cocktail can be the end-result of serious flood... Preventable mostly by conducting a proper negative/positive pressure test and keeping the mouthpiece where it belongs. My rebreather passed both tests, and the mouthpiece stayed put, but a careless interaction with the wreck we were diving, started my issues.

Luckily, I did not fully inhale so only my mouth was damaged. Secondly, the dive was to less than 35 metres and our decompression obligation was slight... less than 15 minutes. I was able to drink Guinness once back to shore.

However, a question. It seems that for a couple of days, I presented the symptoms of a cold or URT infection... dry cough, dragging my arse around, snotty nose. Correct to associate the activation of the complement complex to the damage done my the caustic mouthwash?

Thank you for any insight.

 

[decompression]

Sorry to hear that, Steve. I suffered one about 11 years ago on my first RB dive.....at 75'....heard the gurgle and then felt the burn. A quick switch to bailout and I was fine after a few days. But very weary afterwards. Like you, I believe I was thorough with my checks even under an instructors supervision.


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[Superlyte27]

Doppler, I think you're flu-like symptoms are coincidence. A runny nose is sign of an infection. I don't know how caustic could cause that. Anecdotal, but my caustic did not cause any symptoms other than the normal obvious ones.

 

[Seya]

Did you mouth piece get bumped out of your mouth? Might just be a cold. Could be from not disinfecting some part?

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[kwinter]

There's a bad cold strain flying around these days. The only connection to your caustic incident I can think of is that it might have knocked your natural immunity out of whack for a brief enough time for that rhinovirus to take hold. Or it could have been just the dive itself and being wet. I came down with it 2 weeks ago after a 3- hour quarry dive and have been trying to shake it ever since.


iPhone. iTypo. iApologize.

 

[Doppler]

Sorry to hear that, Steve. I suffered one about 11 years ago on my first RB dive.....at 75'....heard the gurgle and then felt the burn. A quick switch to bailout and I was fine after a few days. But very weary afterwards. Like you, I believe I was thorough with my checks even under an instructors supervision.


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Symptoms sound about the same.

Doppler, I think you're flu-like symptoms are coincidence. A runny nose is sign of an infection. I don't know how caustic could cause that. Anecdotal, but my caustic did not cause any symptoms other than the normal obvious ones.

Not sure, mate. See below... sounds the most plausible. However, always worth gathering more input and "building the data set" LOL

Did you mouth piece get bumped out of your mouth? Might just be a cold. Could be from not disinfecting some part?

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No, the mouthpiece was not dislodged (reread my original post). Yes, it may be a cold, but see below. And don't think it was a function of poor equipment maintenance. I am particularly anal about disinfecting the loop.

There's a bad cold strain flying around these days. The only connection to your caustic incident I can think of is that it might have knocked your natural immunity out of whack for a brief enough time for that rhinovirus to take hold. Or it could have been just the dive itself and being wet. I came down with it 2 weeks ago after a 3- hour quarry dive and have been trying to shake it ever since.


iPhone. iTypo. iApologize.

I really buy the immunity thing, which is why I posted. It seems plausible that the damage done to the inside of my mouth, coupled with the body's reaction to that damage, could have either triggered an immune response that is easy to attribute to a cold virus, or, as you suggest, softened up my resistance to an actual virus.

Feel fine today by the way.

 

[PfcAJ]

What caused the caustic cocktail?

 

[Doppler]

What caused the caustic cocktail?

Tear in loop... small tear.

 

[decompression]

It would have to be quite small to pass checks, then probably got larger with depth?


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[Seya]

Oh I get it now tore it in the wreck. Makes sense now.

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