what are your scuba battle scars..mental and physical

[dherbman]

I saw Al Mialkovsky in the raw. Talk about mental trauma, that was it.

Other than that, I had an urchin spine in my index finger that caused me pain for several years.

 

[scubadobadoo]

My tail bone still hurts from hitting it on the picnic table at Dutch Springs while suiting up two weeks ago. Diving really is a pain in my ***** at the moment!

 

[SeaGurl]

Mental scars.... Knowing that I'm not that man who I thought I was....

Repeatedly terminating solo night dives in Cozumel out of fear of sharks. I knew it was time to terminate the dive when I almost pissed myself and spit out my regulator when I was brushed by a piece of floating plastic.....

I can still hear the theme music from Jaws.

LOL, don't feel bad. On my first checkout dive there were a lot of jellyfish swimming around. This made me a little paranoid of course and with this heightened awareness out of the corner of my eye I saw this hazy plastic looking thing on the side of my face. I freaked out and slapped myself to get it off only to realize it was my snorkel.:shakehead

 

[likelite]

HAW!!! Oh man. I got nothing compared to that.

* Got pulled under backward and nearly drowned playing victim in rescue class
* Panicked and bolted for surface in pool doing buddy-breathing gear exchange - no mask, no reg
* Got separated from buddy on night dive and came up on wrong boat
* A couple of dinghy rides on my first liveaboard...

Most of mine have involved getting lost. Although, on the GBR had mondo jet lag and seasick all at the same time. Oy, it was awful.

 

[nerobanchee]

On my 4th OW dive a few months ago, I had a bad experience with my buddy and I getting lost, accidentally going into a cave, and almost running out of air (on the same dive). So the story goes, we were supposed to navigate through a narrow channel that went parallel with the beach, turn around, and come back through the channel. Well, going through it was fine, it was when we were coming back we had the problems. The vis was pretty poor, my buddy and I had to hold hands not to get seperated. But one thing we didnt notice on the way through the channel/canyon, is that on the way back there was going to be slit like smaller canyons on the side of the main channel. We couldnt tell they were the wrong places to go, because the vis was only a few feet. We kept going in them until we noticed they kept stopping, then we would turn around and try to find the main canyon. There were a lot of divers from our class and "TA's" (teachers assistants) so we kept running in to them when we would find the main channel. When I noticed a TA swimming by, I grabbed him and let him know we were lost and were on the low end of air. He must have thought we hadent gone to the end of the channel yet, so he led us through it one more time. I then pointed to my air and tried to explain that we needed help getting back (this has all happened in about 20 minutes). He pointed us in the right direction and we tried to get back on the right barring of our compass. We finally found where we were supposed to surface and surfaced with only 200psi for my buddy, and 650psi for me. I dont think I will ever go into that canyon/channel again, or at least not for a while.

 

[NorCalDawg]

On my checkout dive I lost my regulator, couldn't recover it and panicked... ended up shooting towards the surface (from about 30ft down) and ended up breathing water about 5 feet from the surface. I thought that was it, i was going to die. Keep in mind I was 12 years old. Shook me up pretty bad but the next day we had a successful dive with no problems and it hasn't bothered me since. However, doing the buddy breathing thing with my instructor was mortifying, the guy had teeth like frankenstein.

 

[Skinsfan1311]

Since getting into diving, I don't have any mental, or physical scars yet. But my checkbook sure does......

 

[stiffany]

Physical Ailments:
*Burst my left ear drum on a dive in Cozumel junior year in college (before getting OW certified). Didn't seem to have any problems going down (40 foot resort course dive), but about thirty minutes after coming up the agony started.

*Seasickness on my second dive on the South side of Utila after getting OW certified in March 2006. Had felt a little nauseous on the boat after the first dive of the day but jumped into the water anyway only to throw up while doing a buddy check (fortunately not on said buddy ;-)) Spent the 45 minutes while the group was underwater retching and wishing I could jump out of the boat and swim to land (about 50 yards away). Learned not to test my limits/go against my gut after DM said "If you don't do this dive, you'll lose your payment for the dive" in a "how could you think of losing a dive" tone as he was helping me get my gear back on the boat in really wave driven water.

Mental Scars:
*Sitting next to an avid professional diver from Cozumel on the plane ride back from the trip where I perforated my ear drum and hearing horror stories about wall and cave dives. Having dove in Cozumel approximately a dozen times pre-certification without any worries (other than maybe the "what if there's a shark?" feeling), each story creeped me out. Still weary about wall dives that go down into the abyss which I think is good (makes me more conscious of what I'm doing) and bad (makes me much less comfortable during those kind of dives)...

 

[swimswitheagles]

Two mental:

Seeing about five minutes of Jaws as a young child. Years of creepy nightmares resulted in which I would be underwater in the ocean with nothing but blue all around and not sure which way was up. Then from a distance I would see a Great White coming for me. It hasn't stopped me from diving but I do get a little creeped out at drop offs and sites like Spooky Channel in Roatan.


Two days on a live-aboard + scrawny weathered senior gentleman + speedo = *shudder*

 

[mobster75]

Let's see..... Sharks.. no problem! Dove a shark feeding site on my 3rd Discover Scuba dive 3 years ago and had no issues (sometimes ignorance is bliss.... I got a bit nervous once I was standing on the bottom at 48' down and I see an 11-ft shark coming shark at me.. thoughts of "Oh God... I'm not gonna make it..." But then as it passed me by a couple inches without even noticing me I was fine the rest of the 45 minutes. So, even growing up in the Jaws-era I don't have issues with big sharks as long as I'm not on the surface looking like a seal.

Only physical scar I've had so far was last July during a shore dive in St. Croix, I somehow happened to brush against some fire coral and wow, didn't realize the stuff just doesn't like to go away.... I felt the initial burning underwater and it wasn't painful, just annoying. So, like the dive shop folks had mentioned during the pre-dive briefing, I was grabbing sand off the bottom and rubbing it into the wound to dull the pain underwater, and that was ok. But the worst part of it was on the land..... Every online reference I found said it should clear up in 3-4 weeks.. Well, 7 weeks later and still suffering from itching and just the general ick of how it looked on my leg (like a whole nest of bees had stung my calf), I was starting to get concerned....

In the end it did go away with just a few small scars left on my calf, but my lesson was well learned.... I will NOT go diving in the Caribbean without exposure protection again.. (I went diving w/ just my swim trunks and scuba gear). And the local dive pro's weren't kidding when they said that fire coral really sneaks up on you...

Looking forward to my 4 day trip to St. Croix at the end of July.. Heh