Wondering what happened?

[Willie]

I am so thankful that you seem to be OK. I cannot imagine how traumatic it was for your wife and the others in the pool. I bet there were plenty of elevated heartbeats that night.

TSandM provided an excellent response as usual. There's a reason for that and its not because she stayed at a HI Express last night.

... I think if someone is hauled out of a pool and requires resuscitation, they should at least be evaluated by paramedics. If the medics got there and you were awake and talking, with normal oxygen saturation, and the situation was explained, and you did not want to go to the ER at that point, it would have been reasonable not to.

It is also good advice to contact DAN when there is any question concerning your health after diving. I have found them very responsive and very helpful.

Willie

 

[Matteo]

no doubt that 3 courses of action need to be taken as others have previously stated....1)get a new instructor....2)report the negligent instructor to your certifying agency....3)when you've had time to recover from this scary incident, please continue diving....this is a very safe sport when done with the proper training...best of luck!

 

[DandyDon]

Excerpting for orginal post...

Next thing I know I was awoken (best word I know) after being given mouth to mouth from the instructor from the side of the pool. I was still in the water. One of the other guys from the class was holding me afloat.

Does this indicate that the Inst didn't want to get wet, even after s/he had drowned a student...?

 

[Misplaced Priority]

My vote is shallow water blackout too. Sorry that happened to you. Glad you came out of it without any neuro effects. You are lucky.

 

[TheRedHead]

If it were shallow water blackout, would he be at risk for the same thing happening during a CESA?

 

[Jim Lapenta]

What agency is this instructor with? He is a MORON and a danger to the sport! Either that or incredibly negligent and cocky. Is he an MD or even a paramedic? If you were slurring while trying to calm down your wife something was STILL wrong with you! And YOU should not have been trying to calm her down. The medics should have been doing that. I cannot believe that this happened and no professional was called other than I bet the instructor put a call in to his lawyer to cover his butt!

 

[countryboy]

Glad you are OK...

Doing OOA drills there should always be an instructor or DM right next to you with with either there hands on your valve (ready to turn back on) or a reg ready to donate.

Right next to the student, and this should be done with one student at a time.

As others have stated, verify with a doctor (that understands scuba diving) that all is well... Find another instructor. Let them know what happened... and get back in the game..

Good Luck!

 

[TheRedHead]

Doing OOA drills there should always be an instructor or DM right next to you with with either there hands on your valve (ready to turn back on) or a reg ready to donate.

Yes, I did the same exercise and I don't consider it inherently dangerious done with an instructor. I think the point is simulate a more realistic OOG where you are not kneeling at the bottom of the pool. The CESA part of the OW checkout dives included turning off the air and disconnecting the inflator hose. Again, the instructor was right there.

The OOP's poster's instructor failed to perform the exercise in a safe manner. Not calling the paramedics was plain stupid and self-serving .

 

[Wildcard]

I would tend to disagree with the shalow water black out therory. You have to be deep first then be assending to shallow water. As the PP02 falls, syncopy occurs. That is the basis of SWB. This sounds more like simply holding ones breath too long.
This instructor needs to be reported to his agancy and his card revoked. What he did and failed to do could be considered criminal. Every near drowning MUST be evaluated in the ER even if the person is feeling fine after.

 

[H2Andy]

This sounds more like simply holding ones breath too long.

try it some time.

you can't pass out this way unless you have flushed your system of CO2
and you run out of O2 in your system before the urge to breathe kicks in.

nothing the diver describes indicates he flushed his system of CO2
prior to the excercise. thus, he should have had his CO2 "alarm"
going off (i.e. forcing him to breathe) long before he passed out.

he was probably working really hard to swim in all his gear,
plus probably agitated, and he probably used up a lot of
the oxygen in his system.

all it takes is a little bit of relaxed pressure to "suck" the last
bit of O2 from your system and black you out, say an
inadvertant ascent to close to the pool surface.

now, granted, this isn't the classical shallow water blackout
scenario... but it certainly is a possibility

see the following:

"Medical researchers feel that many pool deaths, classified as drownings, are really the result of shallow-water blackout. Most occur in male adolescents and young adults attempting competitive endurance breath-holding, frequently on a dare."

http://www.scuba-doc.com/latenthypoxia.html