Unknown Woody From “Dive Talk” DCS and Medical Journey

[Nitrogenius]

One of the common-questions about this incident, is why they didn't pursue medical treatment earlier. I expect the answer is "because it initially looked like dehydration, and oxygen was just a precaution." When DT and DAN do the follow-up video, I'm certain we'll hear more about this.

At the moment, I'm inclined to suggest DT hasn't given us adequate information about the incident to point at any cause with any degree of confidence. It's tempting to want answers, but there's a risk of focusing too heavily on a single potential "red herring" and miss the actual culprit(s).

enganging in advanced diving you will always come across to some symptoms to some degree. A lot of times one is able to "treat onboard" and get away with it. This in combination with an undoubtfully conservative deco settings does easily bias one towards a denial that something serious is in fact happening.
The delay in pursueing treatment is the least surprising for me in their whole description of events. I don't think they tyhought it looked like dehgydration and gave oxygen just as a precaution they gave the oxygen as a treatment, they just underestimated the severeness of the symptoms as such, whcih again is not uncommon at all (unfortunately), but I have to admit that I have been there as well.
I had been treating an inner ear DCS as late as 2 weeks after the incident and I even kept doing decompression dives in between. Not something I am proud of and certainly something I learned from, however I can totally see how that happened.

I think we have plenty of information and no it will never be a single red herring as you put it. But what has been described of the dive is plenty of reasons, why the outcome isn't even particularily surprising. There might be more infor, but I don't think it would matter too much.
What is more surprising is that DT did not expect such outcome at all which speaks a lot to their approach to conduct such dives being my major issue. And once more with the history of incidents they already have been involved apparently a very very slow learing progress if any at all

 

[SlugLife]

What is more surprising is that DT did not expect such outcome at all which speaks a lot to their approach to conduct such dives being my major issue.

Could we reserve the "speaks a lot about..." comments for the other threads? I prefer this one didn't get derailed.

https://scubaboard.com/community/threads/youtube-celebrities-worthless.641524/

 

[grantctobin]

Could we reserve the "speaks a lot about..." comments for the other threads? I prefer this one didn't get detailed.

Seems to fit the rules of the forum and is...accurate?

 

[Nitrogenius]

Could we reserve the "speaks a lot about..." comments for the other threads? I prefer this one didn't get derailed.

https://scubaboard.com/community/threads/youtube-celebrities-worthless.641524/

I have no intention to derail it, but this forum section here is about take aways and learning, isn't it.
So therefore this is also no place to sugarcoat topics, if divers and in this instance even persons of public interest continue to engange in similar behaviour that is far from good or best practises of the industry and apparently repeatedly leads to incidents.
The take away therfore is: do better and learn from mistakes and also reflect on personal attitude towards conducting dives in general but advanced cave dives in particular.
The overall attitude towards executing dives and planning (or lack thereof) is in my opinion as much of a contributing factor to this as all the others mentioned so far.

I am aware of the other thread, but in my opinion my comment directly relates to the incident as such and associated root causes and not really the topic of that other thread.
The other thread is more a bashing, which is not my intention here but rather pointing out what (in my opinion) went wrong here.
And a glimpse of hope that pointing at it could at some point cause some level of reflection of the two and therefore safer dives in future.
Should be of interest of the fanboys as well btw as otherwise content might stop rather sudden at some point, which I really do not hope for!

 

[L13]

One of the common-questions about this incident, is why they didn't pursue medical treatment earlier. I expect the answer is "because it initially looked like dehydration, and oxygen was just a precaution." When DT and DAN do the follow-up video, I'm certain we'll hear more about this.

Except, according to the DT video, the DT team questioned Woody's need to pee in the context of it being a DCS symptom, not a dehydration symptom.

Dehydration may or may not have been a contributing factor to the DCS hit. But, according to the DT video, not needing to pee was a symptom of DCS that was recognized by the DT team as such, before they even left the dive site.

 

[Six Feet Under]

Everybody makes mistakes, even corporations. It's how they make it right that's important.

Agreed. You're not going to get perfect responses every time from anything run by humans... the important thing is that no one died or suffered long-term health effects because of it. Second most important thing is the issue gets corrected and doesn't happen again.

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!

Yes and no. He basically quit technical diving and I doubt he'll ever do it again after that second experience - the first being a CO2 hit on his rebreather a year or two ago at around 230-260 feet. Sold the rebreather after that incident at his wife's request (or maybe demand - not sure) because it scared him so much. The DCS hit was something he said he'd get back in the water after, and as the days/weeks went by after the incident was over, his desire to get back in kind of waned. He admitted his part as far as things he should've done, or should've done better, and that it wasn't wise coming out to do a lackadaisical afternoon dive to 180+ feet on trimix without having been diving in the last 5-6 months and doing no prep (hydration, etc).

I hate it because he was one of my first buddies I was introduced to, and the reason for me getting into cave/tech diving in the first place... but I can't say I wouldn't cut WAAAY back and re-evaluate ****, if the same thing happened to me.

That said, their new family hobby is riding sport bikes - I'm not sure that's safer (and quite sure it's probably worse), but at least if he dies riding one of those it's likely to be faster and more violent than slowly dying of the bends... I can't say I don't see the logic there as having been shot while I was in the academy to become an LEO, and almost drowned (separate occasions years apart, needless to say) - I know which one I'd be more likely to pick as my demise if I had to choose.

 

[Baker_Dive]

I’ve come to the realization a lot of people dislike Woody and Gus and will be negative of them regardless. Have good safe dives everybody but you are wrong and should self reflect upon your own mindset.

 

[Baker_Dive]

Do better dive community. I’m taking to all the negative and critical ones. It’s just diving and shouldn’t be gate kept. Y’all are mostly haters and should self reflect. Half the posters in these threads are who my comments apply too. If you take offense to this, then I’m talking to you. You are not gods gift to the world. You are not special and everyone can do what you do.

 

[lostsheep]

Do better dive community. I’m taking to all the negative and critical ones. It’s just diving and shouldn’t be gate kept. Y’all are mostly haters and should self reflect. Half the posters in these threads are who my comments apply too. If you take offense to this, then I’m talking to you. You are not gods gift to the world. You are not special and everyone can do what you do.

Ironically, my given name does mean “gift of god” so not sure where that leaves us

 

[lermontov]

To clarify exactly what I meant:

You could take the same diver, with the same dive profile, in the same location, same dive-time, same temperature, and all the same conditions you could possibly measure and control, and one day they get bent, the other they do not. There are enough tiny variables that are too difficult to measure and control.

you make it sound like its a 50/50 chance -i suggest its more like ...you can do the same dive etc 1000 times and on the 1001 you get bent- if your following all the accepted parameters of deco diving and you get a hit its more of an anomaly than an expected outcome