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SCUBA STORIES
Real life diving dramas
Scuba diving is a dangerous sport. Even with the best training and attention to detail things can still go wrong.
This book is a collection of real life stories from the ever popular ‘IT HAPPENED TO ME’ column in DIVE
magazine where divers, who have got themselves into perilous situations, describe how they reacted and what
actions they took to ensure they lived to tell the tale. Find out why it important to always carry a knife, why a
back-up delayed SMB is a good idea and even what to do if you are stuck in head first in a shopping trolley on
the sea bed. A fascinating read for divers of every level. .
Published by Syon Publishing Ltd. 1.17 Q West, Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex TW8 0GP
www.syonpublishing.com E-Book ISBN: 978-0-957-1956-2-2 Copyright © 2012 by Syon Publishing Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic
form without permission.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
This book is a collection of scuba diving experiences that readers and contributors of DIVE magazine have
submitted. They may not constitute official scuba diving training procedures and are published for entertainment
purposes only.
Cover illustration: Steve Jakeway.
CONTENTS
1. This is Not a Drill
2. Off in a Trolley
3. Surf's Up
4. Flowing Up
5. Fending For Yourself
6. Ice Cold in Arricafe
7. DCI Denial
8. Monty Halls' Great Escape
9. The Real Thing
10. Getting to Know You
11. Where's the Cavalry
12. Following the Leader
13. Getting it in the Neck
14. To the Rescue
15. Taking the Right Shot
16. A Shot in the Dark
17. Some Don't Like it Hot
18. Our Lives in Whose Hands
19. Step by Step
20. Buoys Will be Buoys
21. Hounded by Basking Sharks
22. Wellied Eel
23. Losing Weight
24. Road to Nowhere
25. Signing Off
26. Shallow Threat
27. Taut, Not Slack
28. It's a Heartache
29. Can You Feel the Force
30. Shot in the Heart
31. Ever Ready
32. The One That Got Away
33. Peril in Pulau Weh
34. Know Your Limits
35. Trust Your Instincts
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
A rescue drill with a trainee became a real-life emergency for advanced instructor Richard
Wordsworth.
THE diving season was well underway and, as diving officer of Blue Dolphins Sub Aqua
Club in Guernsey, I was pleased that the annual batch of ocean diver students was
progressing well.
My student that day was Maya. I had dived with her several times during her training and
knew her abilities well. She was a 50-year-old woman and a nervous student – she was not
very comfortable in the water and had decided to learn to dive to help conquer her fear of the
water. This was her third open-water dive and the main element of this lesson was the
alternative air ascent the student has to breathe from their buddy’s octopus and ascend from
6m in a controlled manner.
The dive site was Havelet Bay in Guernsey, a favourite for training as it is sheltered, has a
nice slipway for entry and exit and there is plenty of fish life to look at. The weather looked
good and the sea calm enough for the planned dive.
After the briefing and a dry run of the exercises, buddy checks were done and we were ready
to go. A giant stride off the slipway went well, so I signalled to Maya ‘okay’ and ‘descend’.
Knowing her nervous nature, I allowed her plenty of time to settle on the bottom, and was not
surprised that she took a minute or two to calm down.
The exercises were to be conducted at 6m so we swam away into deeper water. The first
exercise was mask clearing, and I duly demonstrated this. Maya had done this before in cold
water, so I was confident she could do it with little trouble, but she seemed hesitant and
unwilling to flood her mask. This seemed odd, but eventually she sorted herself out and
performed the drill well.
Next, it was the alternative air source ascent. She was to be the out-of-air diver and I was to
play the role of rescuer. The swapping of second stages went well, and after exchanging
‘okay’ and ‘ascend’ signals, we headed for the surface at a controlled rate.
Once there, I fully inflated my BC and motioned to Maya that I was going to inflate her BC
and that she was to continue to breathe from my octopus until she was fully buoyant. At this
point, she started coughing and I thought she might have breathed in a little water at some
point. To help her regain her composure, I raised her head well out of the water, but she was
coughing up blood and not responding to instructions!
Suddenly, it was no longer an exercise. The adrenaline and training kicked in. My first
thoughts were to get her as high out of the water as possible, so away went her weight belt.
Frantic waving to the shore cover got little response, after all, it was rescue training! Luckily
we were only 20m from the slipway, so I started towing with all my strength.
At this point, the shore cover realised there was something wrong, and when we got to
shallow water they were able to help me get Maya up the slip. I was by now exhausted, but
Maya was in good hands as the shore cover was Ian, our training officer and Claire, a theatre
nurse. All I could think was: What went wrong? Could she have held her breath on ascent and
damaged a lung? There was little chance of the bends from that depth. I was mystified and
concerned.
After a short while the ambulance arrived and took over. Maya was still coughing up pink
fluid, had gone a worrying grey colour and was still unable to speak. She was given oxygen
and taken to the hospital. We followed, anxious about her well-being. After a thorough
examination, the diving doctor diagnosed immersion pulmonary edema (IPE) a rare condition
in which the lungs spontaneously fill with fluid when the individual is immersed in cold
water.
It turned out that Maya had not declared a high blood pressure problem, and this is
considered to be an aggravating factor but would it have prevented her from diving? Probably
not. Apart from that, she had been in good health, didn’t smoke and only drank moderately.
After a couple of days in hospital, she was released and eventually made a full recovery. The
diving doctor said it was unlikely to happen again and that she could probably continue to
dive, preferably in warm water. I’d never heard of the condition before that day, and it’s not
mentioned in any instructor manual.
Even with the benefit of hindsight, I don’t think we would have done anything differently,
but what might have happened if we had been in a RIB, miles from shore, or if the dive had
been deeper? The outcome may have been fatal.
The lessons to be learned from this incident are that shore cover is important, even on
relatively easy dive sites, and the self-assessment questions need to be answered truthfully –
they are there for a reason.
OFF IN A TROLLEY
A low-visibility dive left Nick Lyon with an unusual escape scenario that doesn’t often crop
up in the training manuals
IT WAS a cold New Year’s Day, and I was preparing for the traditional dive in Torquay
Harbour, Devon. In order to entice us into the less than welcoming water, bottles containing
raffle tickets had been thrown into the harbour; each ticket represented a prize to be collected
in a nice warm pub after the dive. With visibility usually being a few centimetres, we tended
to enter the water in pairs, then separate and search the harbour bottom solo by touch.
We kitted up and jumped in. As usual, it wasn’t long before the visibility was wiped out. I
found myself groping my way across the silty sea bed at 3m, unable to see. I had managed to
locate a mooring chain and briefly bumped into my buddy before he disappeared in a cloud of
silt.
Then I experienced something strange it felt as though my fins were no longer pushing me
forward. I’d never experienced anything like it before. I kicked harder but nothing happened.
I just couldn’t understand it, so I thought I should let the silt settle to see what was going on.
As the murk gradually cleared, I began to make out what looked like a grid in front of me.
Looking up, to the left and right, it was all around me. What was it? Then it struck me. I had
inadvertently managed to swim straight into an inverted shopping trolley through the hinged
gate at the back.
I couldn’t remember anything in my training that covered this eventuality. I tried to backfin,
but I didn’t budge.
My trusty ABLJ was wedged behind the gate and I was stuck fast. Then something caught
my eye. The last 50 bar of my gauge was marked in orange and there was a black line across
it, I only had 30 bar left. The situation was serious.
I took stock of the situation. I couldn’t move, I was under the water and running out of air.
The panic started to rise in my chest. I wondered whether I should just take my regulator out
of my mouth, because I didn’t like the idea of my chest getting tighter and tighter. But then it
occurred to me that I didn’t want to die. I realised that I had to move.
I knew what I needed was buoyancy, so I tried to reach my weight belt to ditch it and give
myself some lift without using air, but I couldn’t get my hand to the buckle as my elbows
were jammed up against the sides of my metal prison. I could, however, reach my ABLJ’s
direct feed, so I squeezed the button hard, rapidly filling the ABLJ.
Miraculously, the trolley moved. But it was not far enough. I knew my air was now almost
gone and I had to work harder. I strained and squirmed and amazingly found myself kneeling
up on the harbour bottom. Still in the trolley, but in with a chance!
Without thinking too much about it, I scraped my fin straps down with the opposite foot,
kicked off my fins, staggered to my feet and without stopping to think too much about a plan,
started walking. But now I could move, where should I go?
I knew there were some steps by the harbour wall and I had to find them. I slowly plodded
forward, totally focused on staying upright. If I fell now, I doubted if I could get up again.
Then, bang! I walked straight into the harbour wall, but where were the steps? Left or right?
If I walked the wrong way, I could well have walked to my death. I turned left. I don’t know
why.
At this point, I had so little air left that the regulator started to tighten. Then the wall
disappeared. I had reached the steps cut into the wall! I strode onto the first step and a new
fear struck me. What if I fell backwards now? I was shaking with effort but knew I had to
keep going.
So up I went, emerging from the water with a shopping trolley wedged onto my upper body
and my friends not able to believe what they were seeing. Some laughed, some just stared
open-mouthed. I spat out my regulator and took the best gulp of air I had ever breathed.
After a considerable struggle, I was freed, and never was a post-dive pint more rapidly
swallowed.
SURF’S UP!
Following a decision to launch the club dive boat into heavy swell, sport diver Anne Shaw
regretted not speaking her mind.
WE had several days of excellent diving at Islay in the Southern Hebrides it’s so remote that
we were often the only boats at the dive sites. We had two inflatable boats that always went
out together, and we always tied our gear into the boat on the way to the dive site and back
again, although we had not experienced too many rough seas that week, there was always a
big swell and it would have been very easy for something to be washed overboard.
One day, the waves were huge, and several members of the group, myself included, didn’t
think it was safe to launch from our usual beach. We could have moved and launched from a
beach further down the coast that was more protected from the heavy swell, but the farmer
who owned it would want payment. The diving officer decided to save money, so we set out
from our usual site. Launching was easier than we feared, and I thought that it would perhaps
be okay after all.
Once at the dive site, the Otranto, we tied one boat up and left the other boat’s engine running
for safety cover. We were being thrown about in the swell, so all buddy pairs got in the water
as soon as possible, leaving a pair in each boat to help the divers back in after the dive.
Underwater, conditions were not much better. I was buddying my husband, and at the sea bed
at 20m, we were being tossed back and forth. We soon found a way to cope, by hanging on
when the water surged backwards and finning like mad when it surged forwards. It did make
us feel a bit seasick, and I was thinking that I’d be glad when we were back on dry land.
Upon surfacing, we realised we were the last buddy pair up and that the conditions on top had
got considerably worse. In order to make the pickup as quick as possible, we were pulled into
separate boats. My boat was driven by the diving officer, who, in his haste to get us back to
land, did not tie any of the gear in I was worried it might go over the side.
The journey back was bumpy but exhilarating. I was relieved when I saw we were nearing
our landing site, but as we got closer I realised that the surf was much worse than it had been
when we had left the beach earlier that day. It looked impossible to get back in. The boat my
husband was in held back just beyond the surf as the driver decided the best way to approach.
But the driver of our boat had already made his decision we were reversing back onto the
beach with the large waves coming at the bow. Once the decision was made, there was no
going back and we all hung on as the boat slowly made its way towards the surf. Sitting in the
bow, I closed my eyes I just didn’t want to look.
Suddenly, I was 6m up in the air still sitting on the bow of the boat we were turning over,
lengthways! Cylinders, weight belts and kit bags were shooting past my head and I was
thrown into the sea. Somehow I surfaced next to the upturned boat with a cylinder strap over
my arm - at least one piece of kit was saved.
I heard shouting and saw a diver struggling in the current while trying to reach the boat, her
head was close to the still-turning propeller. I reached out, grabbed her hand and pulled her
towards me so she could hold onto the boat next to me. We were helpless, the water was too
deep to stand in and the current was pulling us further from shore.
Eventually, with a thud, the propeller stopped turning and all I could hear was the other
boat’s engine. They were surfing in to the shore as fast as they could, with the engine tilt
lever released, this would allow them to drive straight up the beach without too much damage
to the engine.
Once they were on the shore, all the divers ran to our aid. They threw us ropes and pulled us
and the boat to the beach. We tried to rescue the kit, but most of it was at the bottom of the
sea. Days later, some of our dive gear was found further down the beach, but some was lost
forever. We were very lucky that day as we could have lost much more than diving
equipment it was the wrong decision to launch and dive in those conditions.
I should have trusted my own judgment and not have been so easily persuaded to dive that
day, but it is very easy to be swept along with other people’s enthusiasm. The most important
thing I learned was that, in the end, each diver is responsible for their own safety and should
not be afraid to go with their gut feeling none of us should be persuaded to go with the flow.
The other lesson was how important it is to tie equipment into the boat. Diving gear is
valuable and should be safeguarded at all times. Waves come in all shapes and sizes, and it is
easy for kit to be washed away or knocked overboard on a crowded inflatable.
FLOWING UP
Dive leader Bev Dixon got more than she bargained for when a free-flowing air inflator
gun led to an emergency ascent.
LAST AUGUST bank holiday weekend, I was diving in Porthkerris, Cornwall, with my club.
On the Sunday, my husband Peter and I were enjoying a dive around the wreck of the Volnay
from a local dive boat. It was a classic square-profile dive we descended down the shot-line
to the wreck on the sea bed at around 21m and stayed at that depth for the whole dive. When
we were about to go into deco time and ascend for our safety stop, Peter signalled to me that I
should put up my delayed surface marker buoy (DSMB). It was at this point that things
started to go wrong.
As I inflated the DSMB with my air inflator gun, its button stuck down, causing a free-flow. I
checked my air gauge - 70 bar - while Peter tried to free the button. We made a few attempts
to stop the free- flow without any success and kept a thumb over the nozzle to try to slow the
flow. The water between us was a mass of bubbles, so it was becoming difficult to see each
other. I could no longer see my air gauge, either.
I held Peter’s jacket and signalled that we should ascend. Then I saw Peter’s hand emerge
through the bubbles holding his octopus I assumed he could see my air gauge and that I did
not have enough air to ascend. While still holding onto his jacket, I took his octopus and spat
out my own regulator, blew into the octopus to purge it and drew a breath, nothing but water
came gushing into my mouth. I tried a second time to purge and take a breath again water
came rushing in. Okay, I thought, third time lucky please let it be air! But it was almost
impossible to prevent the new torrent of water from rushing into my lungs. I was at 21m with
an air gun free-flowing, a buddy’s octopus that wouldn’t give me air and my own regulator
floating somewhere that I couldn’t see, damn all those bubbles.
I don’t know if it was a snap decision or total blind panic, but I let go of Peter, dropped his
octopus and finned as fast as I could to the surface. I thought I’d worry about the
consequences of a fast ascent if I made it. I didn’t try to inflate my BC on the way up,
believing I had no air. Having tried the octopus three times, I had little air in my lungs and
was now desperate to take a breath.
As the water got lighter I thought I had reached the surface, then realised I could see ripples a
few metres above me. I thank God that, at that moment, I had the presence of mind to inflate
my jacket just enough to push me to the surface and keep me afloat.
The skipper tells me I surfaced like a Polaris missile, but all I remember is breaking the
surface to take the most wonderful, sweetest breath I will ever take. I swore, I cried, I waved
frantically, but best of all I breathed in great gulps of air, time and time again. The dive boat
came in swiftly, picked me up and, once on board, gave me oxygen. I had no symptoms of
decompression illness, but was carefully monitored by the dive centre and members of my
club for the rest of the day.
Peter and I have had time to reflect and some important lessons have been learned. The air
gun that failed had been checked just before the dive and was fully functional. It’s not a
serviceable item, but Peter dismantled it after the incident and found that a tiny O-ring had
split at the bottom of the button, presumably wedging it open. The air gun attaches to a
pressure hose, with a similar connection to that of a drysuit. Because my previous gun fell off
while diving, its replacement was fastened to the hose with plastic ties. That was the first
mistake had it not been tied to the hose, we would probably have been able to disconnect it
and stop the free-flow.
Peter was adamant that his octopus was okay, and it certainly appeared to be. Later, I found
out that some regulators will deliver water if they are used when upside down. So, on the next
dive, Peter and two other divers tried out the offending octopus, and sure enough they all took
in water when it was upside down.
Shamefully, neither Peter nor I knew our octopuses would not work when used the wrong
way up. I should also have checked my air gauge again before taking the octopus, instead of
assuming Peter had seen it. But the biggest single mistake was letting go of my own regulator
altogether back on the boat, I found I still had 30 bar in my cylinder.
We have done more than 700 dives between us, developing numerous skills along the way.
But, no matter how much you train or practise, you never know how you will react until a
situation occurs will it be total control, sheer panic or a basic instinct to survive?
FENDING FOR YOURSELF
During a dive off Oban, new diver Jo Smith thought her more experienced buddy would
take the lead, but when he made a rapid ascent, she was left on her own
SHORTLY AFTER I learned to dive, I was on a trip to Oban organised by a club in
Newcastle, where I live. I’d initially trained in Capernwray, an inland dive site in Lancashire,
and subsequently dived in Malta. Although I had been to Oban before with the same club, I
was still new to diving and had only logged 15 dives.
The first dive was a wall dive from a RIB, with a bottom depth of 40m-plus. I was rather
nervous about this, so I was buddied up with a divemaster who had only just joined the club. I
felt a little happier that I was in the hands of a much more experienced and qualified diver (or
so I thought), but still somewhat nervous.
I had a chat to my new buddy and told him that I would really only be happy diving to about
15m - no deeper - so I could get comfortable with some new kit, which I had just got for
Christmas. Also, this was one of my first dives not under tuition or in warm water with a
guide. He said he was fine about the plan and not to worry, he’d look after me.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. The RIB ride out to the site was great fun –
the sun was shining and the sea was calm. We arrived at the site, did our buddy check and
rolled off the boat into water. As we descended, I was watching my new computer with
interest as the metres clocked up and then I watched with fear as they continued to increase. It
was getting darker and I didn’t have a torch. Very soon all I could see was the beam of my
buddy’s torch. Panic started to rise.
I tried to get my buddy’s attention, he was supposed to be looking after me and we’d agreed
to only go to 15m, but he was diving deeper, into the gloom. I followed him, and we had
reached 30m before I managed to grab his fin and tug it so that he turned around and looked
at me. I signalled that I wasn’t happy and that I wanted to ascend and level off he signalled
back ‘okay’.
As we ascended, I began to calm down. Unfortunately, this was only to be short- lived. When
we got to 18m, instead of levelling off, he shot upwards and, a couple of moments later, came
hurtling back down again. He reached out and grabbed at me and pulled off my mask! I could
hardly see, but my buddy had disappeared and I was totally alone in 18m with no mask.
For a split second, I remember thinking of giving in and disappearing to the bottom of the
ocean then something in my head told me not to be so totally ridiculous. Through the blur of
salt water, I focused my eyes as best I could on my new computer, remembered my training
and ascended slowly to 5m. I carried out my three-minute safety stop, and a bit extra, even
though my eyes were smarting and I was scared half to death.
Then I came to the surface. I had no SMB, as my buddy had taken that, and desperately
hoped the boat would be able to see me and pick me up! Thankfully, they spotted me.
My buddy was already on the boat, having made a rapid ascent. When they picked me up, my
language was choice -that is, what you could hear though the tears of relief and frustration.
He said that he’d had problems with his BC and couldn’t control his buoyancy. When we
reached the shore, he jumped in his car and disappeared. He never reappeared at the club
again.
I thought that I would never dive again, but the guys from the club got me in the water the
next day. I was extremely nervous on that dive, but I was absolutely fine and grateful that
they got me straight back into the water to restore my confidence.
This was some years ago now, and I’ve since trained as an instructor and enjoyed hundreds of
dives, but the memory is as clear as if it was yesterday. I was very frightened, but funnily
enough I’m actually quite glad it happened. I know I can cope, and that I can do the right
thing in the face of adversity. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and a better diver.
I learned that while you should be able to rely on your buddy, you should always rely on
yourself and your own kit more.
ICE COLD IN ARRECIFE
On a hot sunny day, hypothermia is the last problem on any diver’s mind. But BSAC sports
diver Toby Mottram found you should be prepared for the cold, whatever the weather
THE FEBRUARY sun was shining strongly as I sat on a beach in Lanzarote. I’m a BSAC
sports diver with about 100 dives, and do between ten and 20 dives per year whenever I get
the chance. My friend Connie was training with a commercial school and going through those
exercises that most of us forget and never practise controlled ascent and surface towing. The
water was so clear that I’d been able to snorkel overhead for most of the dive, watching them
at 15m, but I’d gone back to the beach to warm up. The water temperature on the surface was
20°C, but colder at depth.
I squinted at the sea to see three heads appear on the flat, blue surface of the water. A few
minutes later, after Connie had practised towing the other diver, the party were standing
waist-deep in water doing their debrief. Then I noticed that my friend looked distressed. As I
reached her, she collapsed into my arms, saying I can’t breathe, I need to lie down. I dragged
her up above the waterline with her heels making twin tracks in the wet sand and lay her
down in the recovery position.
At first, I believed this was just a case of post-dive tiredness, and that in a couple of minutes
Connie would be up and celebrating a successful dive. When she was in the recovery
position, her face was blue and a little trickle of vomit came out, which I wiped away. She
again complained that she couldn’t breathe. Her skin felt cold, but it was the sort of day
where you’re normally peeling off your wetsuit because of the heat.
I sat her up to try to help her breathe. As I leaned over her, I could hear a gurgle of water as
she breathed in and out. Connie is fit and healthy, and it still wasn’t clear if she needed proper
emergency care or just a rest. Lungs are designed to reject foreign matter by coughing and by
water absorption, and she never lost consciousness or stopped breathing.
We sat her on a chair in the dive shop, gave her diving oxygen (which can’t hurt) and tried to
dry her. The water in her lungs was frightening, it didn’t occur to us that she might be cold.
At that stage, we decided that we needed more expertise and phoned the ambulance. In
hindsight, our indecision was unforgivable we should have acted immediately.
The ambulance arrived within a few minutes and the paramedic staff were well organised
when getting her hooked up to a pO2 meter and administering oxygen. We set off at a sedate
pace to the general hospital at Arrecife a few miles away. As we climbed the hill through the
village, there was a rapid exchange in Spanish, then suddenly the blue lights and sirens were
on and we took a wild ride down the middle of the road, Connie’s blood oxygen had crashed.
The rush to the hospital was the scariest part of the whole incident.
At the brand-new Urgencias hospital, the staff had Connie through the doors in seconds. She
was white and slumped on the crash trolley. It was a shock to see her in this state, when she
had been so strong and healthy just a few minutes earlier.
At this stage, I wished I’d had more than my basic Spanish to describe the dive and what had
happened to the doctors. I then had a long wait.
Three hours later, I was able to see Connie. She looked grey and was hooked up to several
monitors. An intensive care ward can be an intimidating place and it was difficult to find
someone to explain what Connie’s diagnosis was.
Eventually, two doctors did a sort of double act in Spanglish. They explained that her
temperature had been below 35°C when she was admitted, in other words, she was
hypothermic. The x-rays showed a lot of water in her lungs, and there was probably other
debris, sand, salt, fish goo, that would have entered with the water. Her arterial oxygen had
been lower than normal.
Connie said she had been too busy during the dive to feel cold and it was only on the surface
that things went wrong. They had been simulating an out-of-air situation and she had to orally
inflate her BC on the surface. She had let go of her buddy’s octopus and had probably been
swamped by a small wave as she breathed in. Despite this, she had completed a 50m surface
tow of her dive buddy.
I learned not to underestimate the effect of hypothermia, even on a sunny day, and not to
hesitate to call an ambulance. Be decisive and take action yourself, don’t rely on someone
else to do it for you, even if they work for a professional dive centre.
The main treatment she received at the hospital was getting her warm her lungs were able to
clear themselves. We could have treated her hypothermia on the beach if we had had a rescue
blanket and if we had recognised it.
DCI DENIAL
Heike Weichert, an open water instructor, had logged around 500 dives before she realised
she had been regularly suffering symptoms of decompression illness
I HAVE ALWAYS been a very safe diver. I stick to the decompression profile that the
computer gives me and I am cautious not to ascend faster than I should. However, I often
found myself feeling extremely tired and weak after a day of diving. There were many times
that I had to sleep for a couple of hours in my car before going home, because I felt lethargic
and unable to move. I also had headaches but put these down to dehydration.
After a while, it became normal for me to feel like this after dives, I thought that this is just
something different about me. All the dives were well within depth-time profiles that were
generally considered to be safe. Basically, I just did not want to believe that I was suffering
from decompression illness (DCI), I did not do anything wrong on the dives.
One day, after a perfectly safe and uneventful dive, I suddenly felt an intense burning on my
upper back. When I got out of my drysuit and was in the pub, I had a look at it in the mirror
there were irregular red patches on my upper back and on the left shoulder, which felt as if
they were burning. I explained this to some of my fellow divers, but they laughed about it and
told me that it must be my drysuit. I went home, feeling unwell and embarrassed that I said
something. Eventually, I just waited and the skin bend went away.
I had six more skin bends after further dives. I took an approach of, if I ignore it, it will go
away, and the skin bends always went away. I also asked fellow divers for advice and all of
them said I should wait and see if it goes away, this seems to be the general attitude. I did not
want to cause the other divers the effort and inconvenience of managing an incident.
The skin bends came with increasing frequency. On one occasion, I was having a drink in the
pub on a Friday night after a diving expedition. The following morning, I still felt rough and
sick, but put this down to the alcohol and exhaustion from a week of diving. When I woke up
on Sunday morning, I was unable to write properly and clearly had coordination problems. I
was then too embarrassed to call anyone and just suffered through it. I just hoped it would go
away, which it eventually did.
The last time I had a skin bend, I had been diving on the City of Waterford wreck near
Brighton. I was filling cylinders with another diver afterwards and had visual disturbances – I
saw lots of colourful, fast- moving zigzag patterns together with tunnel vision and a strong
headache. My buddy called the chamber and I was then driven by ambulance to a hyperbaric
facility. Here, they discovered that I also had some impaired coordination and balance
problems, and I was diagnosed with neurological, constitutional and cutaneous
decompression illness. I was recompressed therapeutically, during which I had an oxygen
convulsion, but luckily I made a full recovery.
Following this, I met a friend, an anaesthetist, and told him about my episodes of
decompression illness. He said that I should be checked for a patent foramen ovale (PFO), as
he was quite certain that I had one. A PFO is a hole in the heart between the two upper
chambers. A quarter of the population have a PFO, but in most people the hole is only tiny
and they have no ill effects. However, a large hole means a predisposition to decompression
sickness. Only a very small percentage of people have a large PFO but it turned out that I did.
I learned later from my cardiologist that a skin bend in combination with a migraine aura
almost certainly occurs because of the presence of a PFO.
My cardiologist said I could either stop diving, dive within very conservative limits or have
surgery to close the hole. I chose the surgery. A few months later I got the all-clear, and can
now dive again.
I was lucky I could be paraplegic now or even dead. However, just because I have had my
PFO closed does not mean I am now immune to decompression illness I now am at exactly
the same risk as everyone else without a PFO.
The lesson I learned from all of this was to realise that you can still suffer from DCI, even
when your dive profile was, safe. If you have a symptom after a dive, even a minor one, do
not think it will go away as it can lead to a more serious DCI, get advice from a diving
doctor. Even if the dive profile was okay, there can be many other factors apart from a PFO,
such as fatigue and dehydration, which can contribute to DCI.
If you see a diver with symptoms, and in particular when this is an experienced diver, never
assume that he or she can make their own judgements about the management of the incident.
If you’re the casualty, it’s often quite embarrassing and you don’t like the hassle around you.
I am certain that there are a great many divers out there, including experienced divers, who
live in denial. However, a serious hit can always happen, and once you’re in a wheelchair, it
is too late. Every diver should be aware about the danger of DCI denial.
You've finished. Before you go...
We hope you enjoyed reading the first seven stories of SCUBA STORIES: Real life diving
dramas. This book details scuba diving experiences of real people in real situations.
SCUBA STORIES: Real life diving dramas, is available on the Kindle and can be
found by searching for ‘Scuba Stories’ on the Amazon marketplace.
NEW: SCUBA STORIES 2: The long awaited follow up to SCUBA STORIES is now also available by searching for ‘Scuba Stories 2’ on the Amazon marketplace.
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Published by Syon Publishing Ltd. 3.16 Q West, Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex TW8 0GP www.syonpublishing.com E-Book ISBN: 978-0-957-1956-2-2
Copyright © 2012 by Syon Publishing Ltd
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