One on my daughters ended up taking a chamber ride after going diving this weekend. Here's a quick run down on what happend:
Drysuit dive in cold weather air temp -4 C (~25F) water temp just above freezing. Planned dive time 60 minutes, max depth 15 meters (49 ft)
After diving for about 40 minutes, they were slowly coming back towards the shore at a depth of 10m when my daughters regulator started freeflowing. Dealing with this caused my girl to loose control of buoyancy, resulting in a rapid ascent to the surface. On the surface, her gear froze, stopping her from descending back down. Her (very experienced) buddy saw what happened and did a slow, controlled ascent to the surface and they then proceeded to swim on the surface back to shore.
Right after the dive, my daughter felt fine. They had a fire going on the beach, cooked some sausages, had some tea and talked about the dive. (as in what went wrong etc) Later in the evening my daughter felt tingling in her arms and hands. She didn't think more of it as it seemed to ease off. Next morning the tingling was back along with numbness and then it started to hurt and she said she was not feeling 100% ok. So she went to the local ER, explained that she suspected having a case of DCS. ER staff contacted a specialist in diving medicine, started treatment as advised and then they transferred her to a hospital with a chamber. She spent just under 6 hours in the chamber and then the rest of the night under observation at the hospital and was released in the morning. I took a 8 hour road trip to drive down and pick her up after they said she was ok to go home.
Lessons learned? Don't let a relatively minor problem distract you so as to loose control while diving. Pay more attention to even minor signs of medical problems after something out of the ordinary happens. Not reacting to the first sensations caused an unnecessary delay of about 12 hours in starting treatment.
Drysuit dive in cold weather air temp -4 C (~25F) water temp just above freezing. Planned dive time 60 minutes, max depth 15 meters (49 ft)
After diving for about 40 minutes, they were slowly coming back towards the shore at a depth of 10m when my daughters regulator started freeflowing. Dealing with this caused my girl to loose control of buoyancy, resulting in a rapid ascent to the surface. On the surface, her gear froze, stopping her from descending back down. Her (very experienced) buddy saw what happened and did a slow, controlled ascent to the surface and they then proceeded to swim on the surface back to shore.
Right after the dive, my daughter felt fine. They had a fire going on the beach, cooked some sausages, had some tea and talked about the dive. (as in what went wrong etc) Later in the evening my daughter felt tingling in her arms and hands. She didn't think more of it as it seemed to ease off. Next morning the tingling was back along with numbness and then it started to hurt and she said she was not feeling 100% ok. So she went to the local ER, explained that she suspected having a case of DCS. ER staff contacted a specialist in diving medicine, started treatment as advised and then they transferred her to a hospital with a chamber. She spent just under 6 hours in the chamber and then the rest of the night under observation at the hospital and was released in the morning. I took a 8 hour road trip to drive down and pick her up after they said she was ok to go home.
Lessons learned? Don't let a relatively minor problem distract you so as to loose control while diving. Pay more attention to even minor signs of medical problems after something out of the ordinary happens. Not reacting to the first sensations caused an unnecessary delay of about 12 hours in starting treatment.
