Grin
10-06-2006, 02:17 PM
With all the tradgedy etc.. of late, here's my story.
I have been going to ear docs and calling DAN etc.. for a couple months due to some sort of diving injury to my ear, maybe?(I thought anyway!). I finally ended up at the U of Miami a few weeks ago. Probably the best ear doc in the world, and a DAN Specialist for these types of issues to DAN, suspects I could have taken a DCS hit, but he cannot be 100% sure. Possibly Inner Ear DCS. He said this type of DCS is extremely hard to pinpoint and diagnos 100% for sure. Either way I am out of the water for 6 months and either way I need to be careful as hell to either not get DCS again or not screw my hearing up for life. I do think the symptoms do point more toward DCS now that I take a look at them, but that never crossed my mind until he said that. I have always had issues with my left ear and and also fought seasickness when it's rough. These symptoms seemed almost normal for me, except it wasn't rough sea conditions this day. I have surfaced in the past and the rough sea conditions got me seasick but this was brought on differently. Usually I would feel great until I hit the surface in roguh conditions. What happened was I was accending from a 1 minute safety stop at 30 ft to do another minute at 20 ft, but as soon as I got to 20 ft I had a Vertigo attack for 20 seconds. I wasn't scared or nervous and I actually thought I was in a current spinoff or something and with the snot layer up there(20 ft depth) I thought I was getting motion sickness as the current spun me. I never have had a vertigo hit before and the docs cannot induce it, so either nothing ever was broke in my inner ear(indicationg it was DCS and not a inner ear injury) or it healed already(which is very likely also). After the Vertigo hit I felt somewhat seasick unitl I hit land and then felt somewhat better. Then I felt somewhat nauseated for a week and my left ear remains juicy two months later(only remaining symptom).I have no hearing loss, they cannot induce Vertigo and said I actually test better than most people on these tests, they cannot find anything wrong with me, my ears look great to the docs, but I complain of my left ear not being right is the deal. They don't want to go inside my ear to do surgery since it was possibly DCS, and even if it isn't DCS, my ear looks great to them and any lingering issues will clear 100% in time, so surgery is almost kind of like trying to fix what ain't broke. It was way to late to go into the chamber when the word DCS was finally thrown at me, but I am 100% sure if the right doc was contacted when this originated, or I knew what was going on, I would have gone. Plain and simple I was not smart enough to know this was possibly a DCS hit. I was originally diagnosed with a inner ear rupture, something like Perilymph Fitsula. It still could have been that but it healed over by itself, if that is the case according to the docs. If it were not for the lingering effects of the Nausea days after and the lingering ear fullness feeling I would have just wrote it off as a normal motion type sickness for me and thought my ear was acting up and causing me motion sickness which has happened to me before.. Slowly a few days later I realized my ear must be damaged(what I thought), then almost two months later DCS was a possibility.
These are not exact times and depths, for my two dives, but here are the, off the top of my head, dive profiles. I did a max depth dive of 120 ft for like 20 minutes in 50 degree water on 28 NITROX. On the first dive I did decend rapidly to get to a wreck, without the current sweeping me past, but had no issues clearing or anything and felt great except for the cold as hell water. Then we ran down to Jupiter and after about 1hr 20 minutes surface time, I did a 50 minute dive in 70-75 ft in 80 degree water on 36 NITROX. I always come up much slower than the PADI requirment. I send a float up on a reel at the end of all of my dives and come up about 20 fpm. I kind of do my own style of safety stop, stoppong at 30 ft for a minute, then coming up to 20 ft for a minute. My computer(Oceanic Data Plus), was on it's last green loading bar, but never went to the first caution(yellow bar), so I really was right at the limit. When I plugged my computers #s in the tables I am still right within the limits. It seemed very conservative to me at the time. And I was planning to do a third dive as I usually do, until the hit got me.
Basically, I think the facts point at a DCS hit. Vertigo, nausea, and the fact it happened upon accent. Even though you wouldn't expect DCS at a safety stop depth and it to be much more likely once you surface. The reason it does not look like a ear incident is: I was not really doing anything to screw my ear up at the moment the issue happened. I just came up super slow from 30 ft to 20ft and had zero indications anything was wrong, then instantly I was spinning, then felt like crap afterwards. I never disected the situation and it just seemed like a ear problem to me. Wake up call! Now I know and am more educated. Hopefully it is not soemthing that will screw me out of diving forever.
Any which way, I'm not diving for awhile. I hope to dive agin in the future, but will be extremely conservative and am definatly eliminating deep diving forever. I may even quit scuba altogether, but I'm not going that far yet.
I question the many people I have seen who feel a little extra tired at the end of a days diving. After diving for 7 years and having been that tired person a few times and seen people actually lay down on the ride in, I have to wonder if many people don't have minor hits they right off as a headache or anything they can make up to avoid the real fact. I know for a fact that after a good day I feel great and don't need any extra sleep and I actually am probably more energetic than a normal day. I think this hit was minor compared to what could happen to me if I am not real careful. I think it was DCS and I'm not blowing off the warning. I am lucky to have recieved this warning with no serious complications. Some people never have any problems and I am jealous. I don't believe in building tolerance , but I do believe some peoples bodies can just take more and I also believe it can happen to anyone at any time. Because it happened to me. 50 mins is a long dive, but it was warm and I was not working hard at all and was within limits, and even came up slower than required. So all that is left, is for me to take the warning and put myself into extreme safe limits or quit. I love diving and it has become my primary hobby the last few years. But pryor to the diving rage, I have been fishing for many years as a main hobby. I will just have to return to fishing as a primary, and hopefully I can have diving as a secondary hobby and do it when the conditions are just too damn nice and keep it unaggressive.
All in all I think it was a DCS hit, but not a bad one, but bad enough to give me a heads up that I need to be really careful and change my ways. I know many dive more aggressivly than this and never have issues, but I did many times before also and never had a problem. Pryor weekends had me down 135ft for 1/2 hour(computer one step from deco) and then doing a couple more 70-80 ft dives afterwards for 50 minutes or more and feeling like a million dollars at the end of the day. I now see I was pushing the limits, and was just getting comfortable thinking I was OK doing so. Obviously I was wrong!
My first step here is I am dumping my steel 100 tanks(for sale on Spearboard, go take a look) and going back to aluminum 80s to force me to lesser bottom times. Of course I will be surfacing with alot more mix pressure in the 80s from now on also and all sorts of extra safe changes. That's all next year, so I have plenty of time to figure out if I feel comfortable doing much more than 60 ft and two dives a day or what. After all the crap that happened here last week, I am not going to take anything lightly.
FYI, when you see my sale, I am not selling everything! I have tons of dive gear. I am just thinning the stock and setting myself up for normal non- aggressive diving. I'm keeping one good of everything, and selling off stuff that isn't required of a 2ndary hobby. I will still have better gear than 99% of the world.
So be careful.
I have been going to ear docs and calling DAN etc.. for a couple months due to some sort of diving injury to my ear, maybe?(I thought anyway!). I finally ended up at the U of Miami a few weeks ago. Probably the best ear doc in the world, and a DAN Specialist for these types of issues to DAN, suspects I could have taken a DCS hit, but he cannot be 100% sure. Possibly Inner Ear DCS. He said this type of DCS is extremely hard to pinpoint and diagnos 100% for sure. Either way I am out of the water for 6 months and either way I need to be careful as hell to either not get DCS again or not screw my hearing up for life. I do think the symptoms do point more toward DCS now that I take a look at them, but that never crossed my mind until he said that. I have always had issues with my left ear and and also fought seasickness when it's rough. These symptoms seemed almost normal for me, except it wasn't rough sea conditions this day. I have surfaced in the past and the rough sea conditions got me seasick but this was brought on differently. Usually I would feel great until I hit the surface in roguh conditions. What happened was I was accending from a 1 minute safety stop at 30 ft to do another minute at 20 ft, but as soon as I got to 20 ft I had a Vertigo attack for 20 seconds. I wasn't scared or nervous and I actually thought I was in a current spinoff or something and with the snot layer up there(20 ft depth) I thought I was getting motion sickness as the current spun me. I never have had a vertigo hit before and the docs cannot induce it, so either nothing ever was broke in my inner ear(indicationg it was DCS and not a inner ear injury) or it healed already(which is very likely also). After the Vertigo hit I felt somewhat seasick unitl I hit land and then felt somewhat better. Then I felt somewhat nauseated for a week and my left ear remains juicy two months later(only remaining symptom).I have no hearing loss, they cannot induce Vertigo and said I actually test better than most people on these tests, they cannot find anything wrong with me, my ears look great to the docs, but I complain of my left ear not being right is the deal. They don't want to go inside my ear to do surgery since it was possibly DCS, and even if it isn't DCS, my ear looks great to them and any lingering issues will clear 100% in time, so surgery is almost kind of like trying to fix what ain't broke. It was way to late to go into the chamber when the word DCS was finally thrown at me, but I am 100% sure if the right doc was contacted when this originated, or I knew what was going on, I would have gone. Plain and simple I was not smart enough to know this was possibly a DCS hit. I was originally diagnosed with a inner ear rupture, something like Perilymph Fitsula. It still could have been that but it healed over by itself, if that is the case according to the docs. If it were not for the lingering effects of the Nausea days after and the lingering ear fullness feeling I would have just wrote it off as a normal motion type sickness for me and thought my ear was acting up and causing me motion sickness which has happened to me before.. Slowly a few days later I realized my ear must be damaged(what I thought), then almost two months later DCS was a possibility.
These are not exact times and depths, for my two dives, but here are the, off the top of my head, dive profiles. I did a max depth dive of 120 ft for like 20 minutes in 50 degree water on 28 NITROX. On the first dive I did decend rapidly to get to a wreck, without the current sweeping me past, but had no issues clearing or anything and felt great except for the cold as hell water. Then we ran down to Jupiter and after about 1hr 20 minutes surface time, I did a 50 minute dive in 70-75 ft in 80 degree water on 36 NITROX. I always come up much slower than the PADI requirment. I send a float up on a reel at the end of all of my dives and come up about 20 fpm. I kind of do my own style of safety stop, stoppong at 30 ft for a minute, then coming up to 20 ft for a minute. My computer(Oceanic Data Plus), was on it's last green loading bar, but never went to the first caution(yellow bar), so I really was right at the limit. When I plugged my computers #s in the tables I am still right within the limits. It seemed very conservative to me at the time. And I was planning to do a third dive as I usually do, until the hit got me.
Basically, I think the facts point at a DCS hit. Vertigo, nausea, and the fact it happened upon accent. Even though you wouldn't expect DCS at a safety stop depth and it to be much more likely once you surface. The reason it does not look like a ear incident is: I was not really doing anything to screw my ear up at the moment the issue happened. I just came up super slow from 30 ft to 20ft and had zero indications anything was wrong, then instantly I was spinning, then felt like crap afterwards. I never disected the situation and it just seemed like a ear problem to me. Wake up call! Now I know and am more educated. Hopefully it is not soemthing that will screw me out of diving forever.
Any which way, I'm not diving for awhile. I hope to dive agin in the future, but will be extremely conservative and am definatly eliminating deep diving forever. I may even quit scuba altogether, but I'm not going that far yet.
I question the many people I have seen who feel a little extra tired at the end of a days diving. After diving for 7 years and having been that tired person a few times and seen people actually lay down on the ride in, I have to wonder if many people don't have minor hits they right off as a headache or anything they can make up to avoid the real fact. I know for a fact that after a good day I feel great and don't need any extra sleep and I actually am probably more energetic than a normal day. I think this hit was minor compared to what could happen to me if I am not real careful. I think it was DCS and I'm not blowing off the warning. I am lucky to have recieved this warning with no serious complications. Some people never have any problems and I am jealous. I don't believe in building tolerance , but I do believe some peoples bodies can just take more and I also believe it can happen to anyone at any time. Because it happened to me. 50 mins is a long dive, but it was warm and I was not working hard at all and was within limits, and even came up slower than required. So all that is left, is for me to take the warning and put myself into extreme safe limits or quit. I love diving and it has become my primary hobby the last few years. But pryor to the diving rage, I have been fishing for many years as a main hobby. I will just have to return to fishing as a primary, and hopefully I can have diving as a secondary hobby and do it when the conditions are just too damn nice and keep it unaggressive.
All in all I think it was a DCS hit, but not a bad one, but bad enough to give me a heads up that I need to be really careful and change my ways. I know many dive more aggressivly than this and never have issues, but I did many times before also and never had a problem. Pryor weekends had me down 135ft for 1/2 hour(computer one step from deco) and then doing a couple more 70-80 ft dives afterwards for 50 minutes or more and feeling like a million dollars at the end of the day. I now see I was pushing the limits, and was just getting comfortable thinking I was OK doing so. Obviously I was wrong!
My first step here is I am dumping my steel 100 tanks(for sale on Spearboard, go take a look) and going back to aluminum 80s to force me to lesser bottom times. Of course I will be surfacing with alot more mix pressure in the 80s from now on also and all sorts of extra safe changes. That's all next year, so I have plenty of time to figure out if I feel comfortable doing much more than 60 ft and two dives a day or what. After all the crap that happened here last week, I am not going to take anything lightly.
FYI, when you see my sale, I am not selling everything! I have tons of dive gear. I am just thinning the stock and setting myself up for normal non- aggressive diving. I'm keeping one good of everything, and selling off stuff that isn't required of a 2ndary hobby. I will still have better gear than 99% of the world.
So be careful.