Unknown Woody From “Dive Talk” DCS and Medical Journey

[Nitrogenius]

Something else that made a big difference is woodie had buddies thay were able to advocate on his behalf and look at other out of the box options. In parallel with the efforts of dan.

True but as stated before thsi should be sorted before an emergency actually happens not during

I hope he is ok and this shows how it can happen to anyone.

He seems ok, so great. fingers crossed there will not be after effects. As for it can happen to anyone seems to neglect the portion of own responsibility in this.
Paricularily it can't be stressed enough in areas like the carribean that combine hot temeratures with remote locations:
HYDRATE HYDRATE HYDRATE !!
not using a pee valve for sure is an absolutely wrong approach here. So no I disagree it can't happen to anyone it is prone to happen to the less prepared and not properly cautious!
Fromn all what has been described this seems far from a real undeserved hit, despite that very conservative deco settings

 

[Nitrogenius]

There is an amount of hindsight bias to be aware of with any analysis:

• We know a lot more about the eventual outcome from where we're sitting, than they knew in the moment.
• We also know a lot less about what it looked like in person at the time from their perspective.

I do agree that it certainly sounds like they should have pursued medical treatment much, much earlier with what they knew at the time. One of the valuable things about examining these incidents, is if we have a similar experience ourselves, we can benefit from that hindsight.

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I suspect part of the explanation, is how people deal with medical care. Some people are like the Black Knight, while others rush to the ER at the first sign of having the sniffles.

fair points, while it still boggles my mind how one can conduct such dives and not having pre-planned what to do in an actual emergency (other than relying on DAN to fic it if it were to happen), I totally agree that there is such bias. And given the description I can somewhat see that they would have tried to deal with it via oxigen only and when there was improvement that they held off for a bity more, however what they should still have done is figuring out where the next chamber was and how to get there while he was on oxygen for exactly the reason that symptoms could worsen rather than focusing on getting dinner sorted.
the latter just ties into the lack of dilligence and seriousness the two continue to show despite their near misses and accidents in their vicinity they already exeperienced there seems to be quite little learning curve visible here. It is one thing to screw up once and then learn from it, but they seem to contune to persue dives with questionable practises at the least and given the audience even normalising such behaviour and thus reflecting on the industry ponetially being fairly reckless and thus hurting us all.

 

[Nitrogenius]

Calling Brian Kakuk inexperienced is inaccurate.

which I am not sure if this does make the delay in treatment not even worse, especially since he seemed to have established that he was even dehydrated pretty early!

 

[Nitrogenius]

Maybe we have (or had) this overly optimistic belief that DAN is like an elite delta force team ready to spring into action to evacuate the injured or sick at the drop of a hat. The reality and the shear logistics of doing that outside the US is just not feasible at that level.

Well I would tend to disagree here. It should be possible. And I am sure that aquamed for example would have been able to deal with it better and while they would have not (as far as I remeber their terms) covered such a dive, I am sure they would have done coverega first and then recouped for not being insured. I thinkl they only cover rec dives and no overhead/ decompression diving, at least there were some limitations in the past. When I dealt with them abroad they were always helpful and top notch (only available in Europe though I think - worldwide coverage but gotta have residence in Europe)

 

[Nitrogenius]

Another way to think about this.
Abaco to nasuu is something like 100 miles.
It cost him 10k

Again, step one is to have a ton of money.

step one is to come prepared!

 

[Nitrogenius]

Going for anything but a very short dive in a drysuit without a pee valve seems unacceptable to me, I would have to be dry as a bone not to have to pee in the first few minutes of any dive, and trying to hold it would make for a very unpleasant experience.
On the other hand, drinking unnecessary amounts of water to prevent dehydration due to concerns for DCE, raises the concern that overhydration might increase the risk of IPE. Just my opinion, not aware of being a certain fact.

Got to drink a real lot of water to risk IPE though especially in tropical areas!! rather more important than being worried about drinking too much is to add sufficient electrolytes to your diet along with it

 

[Nitrogenius]

Literally can't prove it matters until you are clinically dehydrated to the point of causing other health problems.
In this case Woody's dive incident isn't because he skipped a water break.

next accident waiting to happen here with this interpretation of todays state of diving medicine?
it seems quite apparent that dehydration was at least a major contributing factor that has been established by Brian and his line of questioning!

 

[Nitrogenius]

That extreme exhaustion should have sent massive red flags up to call DAN. They put him on O2 and did nothing else. Is this the diver equivalent of “rubbing dirt on it and walking it off”?

It also makes me think on how much that contributed to DANs initial (still wrong and not ok) reaction to the incident and how the reaction might have been different if they had called them right out of the water stating hey we just surfaced and have a diver in a a bad state, please help we have him on oxygen for now to stabilise the situation as much as possible but we need help here..

 

[KEITHB1955]

I went through similar circumstances in November was doing a live on and was in Eluthrea in the Bahamas and was into dive number 10 , we started on Sunday November 12, and I got bent on the 14th, we did a 68 ft shark dive that morning and then a 2.5 rest before moving to another site, my NDL on computer said I had 32 minutes left of NDL , got into see saw dive because of the current and went to 86 ft! Maybe thats what did it, broke my dive plan, anyhow I still was showing 18 minutes of NDL and started my way back to vessell, once I was back on board the DCS kicked in, it was not enjoyable, was flown to Nassau and put in Chmaber next morning at 730 , spent 2.5 hours in Chamber, spent a night in the hospital too,

 

[Nitrogenius]

Was a very close-to-home example of just how "dumb" someone can be when they're in medical crisis, regardless of their knowledge.

And yes that happens and we are all prone to brush it off, so i am not too critical about the dleay in treatment, but more about the lack of preparation in general (emergency plan) and then in the emergency that had manifested to not start an inquiry to at least then be prepared..
But it all happens, what would be interesting from your example though is:
Did the diver in question chnage his behaviour after this incident? And did he refelect in hindsight and accepted some responsibility in the late treatment?
we all make mistakes and ideally smart persons don't learn from their own mistakes but from mistakes from others, howevere at least one should learn from their own mistakes and the latter is something i Lack to see with the Divetalk folks. I mean to be blunt after the Missouri incident you go on a dive trip to a remote location and yet have not set up a proper emergency plan? Really? does not sound like learning a lot and all that in public along with normalising such behaviour. The latter is my issue here..
Or how about equipment confirguation and gas choices after Missoury. Gus already had issues in a restriction due to non ideal equipment configuration but yet gets in trouble due to equipment on this dive? the list goes on and and seems to show a pattern.. and that is really the issue here. Unfortunatley this is not about an isolated screw up event. And then the focus is even more on pointing fingers at DAN (which did screw up no doubt and hopefully this event will therefore help the greater community for DAN fixing certain issues), but I do not see much of accepting own responsibility here or any of a learning curve other than "of we should slow it down now" followed by "hahaha I do not even see how this will be possible" so unfortunately likely the next accident to happen and fingers crossed hopefully not being fatal at some point!