what are your scuba battle scars..mental and physical

[HILTISOLO]

All I can tell you is never push it, I had a dive early in the season while there was still ice on the lakes and decided to check out some new cold water gear on a small lake (the ice had "rotted", or honeycombed as it does when the cake isn't quite melted) I started the dive with some 30' of broken ice to the "cake" and desended underneath. It really was an excellent dive as the visibility was some 50', but I had boyancy problems with the new equipment that kept me positive at less than 15'~ eventually I got tired of staying down (I had alum 80's) and the tank didn't help as it emptied, so I decided to surface figuiring to break the ice and work my way back to shore.........now as a tip you need to realize that in early march when anyone sees someone "through the ice" in the lake they generally call all emergency response personnel (and they did) which resulted in my removing my glove (so I could signal OK and hopefully keep the chopper from showing up) and weight belt (to get a little higher out of the water) and mask/snorkel. I cut the heel of my hand pretty badly on the ice as I could not get my glove back on~which went numb just about instantly~and disappointed the EMT who wanted to treat it. It was a lesson for me to understand better that there are things you don't realize that could be real problems, I definately check new gear out in shallow, unfrozen, lake "check out dives" The other unforseen was that while I was down the wind changed and shifted the ice cake tight to shore, this made progress back more difficult, but beyond these things I do remember approaching the underside of the ice wondering if the entire cake was rotted? or just the area I had tested so thoroughly? Those last few seconds of the dive stand out, because if the ice hadn't broken up upon surfacing I would have had to rely on unfamiliar gear and a compass bearing back to shore which is certainly the first step in a series of problems that snowball to the wrong result. In the time since I spend much more time talking with other divers and discussing my plans and goals with more experienced people so I know I'm approaching my goals with my eyes open, after all this is about enjoying your free time. I am not a big fan of diving in the carribean, I think the best diving is in the great lakes, it is just about endless for dive sites, for anyone willing to travel a bit and there is no shortage of wrecks. BUT I have learned to approach them with respect, if not from experience, then advice

 

[Gdog]

hmmm.....in our first year of diving, watching my wife shoot to the surface with an inflator valve stuck full open, from 60 fsw, with about 10-12' vis, watching her fight to grab her dump valve but unable to do so until she went out of sight in the thermalcline at about 40'......forcing myself to ascend slowly, even did a 3 minute safety, wondering if she was bent, unconscious, drowned,, ect.....gave me alot of bad dreams for a while about losing her during a dive, sometimes still have a dream about that.
She was ok, just freaking out at the surface. She complained later of pain in her shoulder and arm, wondered if she took a small hit there, but she refused to go in after a DM told her that there was no way she got a hit. symtoms resolved themselves after a few weeks. Oddly enough, all of our dive gear had just been thru its first annual inspection. Just goes to show..........gotta be ready for anything down there.