Unknown Woody From “Dive Talk” DCS and Medical Journey

[chrisjur]

Blaming DAN for not have a set evacuation plan for every little back water dive site in the world is not surprising. This one was 100 miles off Miami, but we are talking about 700 islands with 41 airstrips In the Bahamas alone. How many in the Caribbean, SE Asia?

Yes, but this isn’t a remote evacuation from the side of a mountain or a search and rescue operation. It was a medical flight from a commercial airport. Regardless of how small it is, the commercial air and medivac systems are setup to leave their hubs and extract patients from wherever they might be. They’d be useless otherwise. There are no less than 8 commercial flights per day from my area to Marsh Harbor Airport - it’s hardly an abandoned airstrip on a patch of sand.

A story has been woven that there required some type of deep local knowledge and use of a coconut phone to get a night flight out of there when, in reality, the guys were able to arrange one themselves within an hour using Google and a Platinum Amex.

 

[Searcaigh]

In this case Woodie was using air diluent, not trimix

And this is something I don't understand.

It's not like it was going to cost them a fortune on He using a rebreather, their choice of breathing gas is questionable to me given the depth.

 

[Tom_Ivan]

The air diluent thing has been banded around a lot despite no evidence to support it.

They never state what gas they were on in the video.

 

[iliketopetsharks]

The air diluent thing has been banded around a lot despite no evidence to support it.

They never state what gas they were on in the video.

They said AIR multiple times.
If they said AIR but meant TRIMIX, that would be an incredibly poor choice of words.

 

[Tom_Ivan]

Fair enough

 

[Kay Dee]

I have had an evacuation. ........... Bhutan insisted that our flight needed a Bhutanese navigator. As it turns out they are in short supply................Lots of dive destinations have weak infrastructures making it even more important to count on DAN.

And just how was the diving in the Land of the Thunder Dragon?

 

[galodoido]

Was Woody conciously aware that he was dehydrated prior to starting the dive?

He went on a 150-minute dive wearing a drysuit with no p-valve in it. If this is routine for him, he might dehydrate on purpose to avoid having to pee on long dives. I don't see how he would not be miserable if he was properly hydrated and unable to urinate.

 

[cerich]

Yes, but with the correct secret DT decoder ring, that just means Woodie was tired and doing the normal breath O2 when tired thing that everybody with enough experience to comment knows about. At least as far as Gus or the dive guide could possibly know.

Remember, as non-DT fans, you and I don't have the experience to know how to interpret what Woodie and Gus say in the video.

But, I've been assured, by SB regulars not just DT fans, that it is normal to breath O2 for hours and not consider it an emergency. Or maybe that only applies to Woodie. I need to go back and review my O2 provider training, it is very confusing that I don't remember it that way.

WTAF?

It shouldn't be normal. Excessive post dive fatigue is at best sub clinical DCS, and most people can tell difference between "had an unusually active day I'm beat" from "holy crap I literally can't keep my eyes open and feel off" of being bent (normally accompanied by some other niggling symptom, balance , tingling, tight feeling skin, etc)

If someone thinks sucking down oxygen post dive to deal with fatigue is normal they need to seek out better training and buddies. It really isn't. It would be a huge flag to me that I am diving with a bunch of yahoos and morons if I joined divers that had normalized this.

I am sometimes amazed at habits and beliefs that are really bad or stupid are reinforced and unquestioned by divers who fall into a peer pressure situation.

Don't do "trust me" dives and don't trust someone that thinks having to suck oxygen post dive is just normal either.

 

[L13]

They said AIR multiple times.
If they said AIR but meant TRIMIX, that would be an incredibly poor choice of words.

They might have been simplifying things for their YouTube audience.

 

[Whitrzac]

They might have been simplifying things for their YouTube audience.

If they were diving trimix they would have touted it as such.
It would have been a whole 5min segment of them hyping up trimix, how amazing it is, etc.

Instead they dove beyond all recommended depth limits for air diluent. Again.

They both have had near death experiences diving air too deep in a rebreather, but continue to do so.