It isn't fear; it's physical

[wayfaringwordhack]

After more than a month of no diving, J and I went for an afternoon dive yesterday. Because there weren't many people on the boat, the instructor said he would take us down to 40 meters. As level two divers, we can go to 20m with a partner, but anything deeper must be done with supervision.

Yesterday, I can tell you, I was happy to have an instructor with me.

We swam down very rapidly and there was a strong current. All the sudden I started having trouble breathing. We were at 36m. Well, I thought, this is weird, I haven't been putting out enough effort to be out of breath. Another three meters down and I thought, this is wrong; I need to tell Daniel (the instructor) that I have a problem.

If any of you are divers, you know that the CO2 toxicity can happen in a few seconds. I'm not an experienced enough diver, and I guess I didn't pay enough attention during my level two training, to have had the reflex to completely empty my lungs. The CO2 toxicity was aggravated by narcosis, which can alter your perceptions and make you do stupid stuff.

Well, I go Daniel's attention and he started taking me back towards the surface. My hands were trembling and my fingertips felt like they were on fire. I was having black flashes across my vision and difficulty getting a good breath. I wasn't afraid, however, because I was sure that Daniel would take care of me. I asked him to give me his underwater writing slate and pencilled the message: "Ce n'est pas le peur; c'est physique." (the title of this message) I needed to write that because, as I've mentioned before, diving scares me, though I haven't been scared in quite some time. I didn't want him to think I was panicking. If I'm panicked, I'll admit it, but it was important to me that he understand that this time it was not fear. It didn't help me relax and get my breathing under control to think that I had ruined the dive for everyone else.

We didn't get out of the water directly but continued the dive at 15m. We can a really cool crab (It was cream colored with darker speckles and had a very high-domed back, almost like the top of an egg. It burrowed vertically into the sand every time we uncovered it) and an enormous humpheaded (?) parrotfish. It was about three foot long and Daniel said it is a "little one, an adolescent."

So, the dive started off poorly, but finished okay.

Now I know what narcosis feels like and CO2 toxicity and I don't wish to repeat either.

BTW, the narcosis symptoms vary from person to person. J got blurry tunnel vision and felt light-headed.

Comments

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Oh! And we were just talking about the lack of control thing.

I guess you can look at is as a good thing, you had the experienced together with an instructor who had the situation under control and now you can recognize the early sympoms.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

I tell myself the same thing: At least I know what it feels like now, and I justify my choice to dive with competent people, whom I trust to take care of me.

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

yikes! I'm glad you're okay...
No dying!

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I sure am glad, too! :P

[pjthompson]

Very scary. And it isn't just inexperienced divers who get nailed like that.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the other lady with us, Pascale, is training to become a monitor, and she experienced the beginnings of breathlessness, too. Luckily she was able to get hers under control by herself since Daniel was busy with me. :-S

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

My problem was that I didn't have a healthy respiration. As you said, I was shallow breathing, and at times, I noticed I was blocking my breath. That coupled with a quick descent in a strong current is what got me. Like you said, I think the effects of it were compounded by the narcosis.

The first time I ever did a deep dive, I didn't have the narcosis symptoms because we went down very slowly. All that I sensed was that the air had a funny taste.

[ruvdraba.livejournal.com]

I've only experienced something like this once, and it was because I wasn't exhaling enough. That was due to over-exertion and a reg that wasn't tuned to give me enough air on the inhale - so I was only partially exhaling.

It was a 58m on a decompression dive on the SS President Coolidge in Vanuatu. We went down very fast to reduce the decompression time. I over-exerted and my regulator wasn't tuned to give me enough air to support the effort. Your diaphragm has to work much harder at depth, so the tuning on your 2nd stage can help. It did feel very bad, and because we were below deco depth, it wasn't an easy one to abort. And the narcosis made it all the scarier.

Once I got to the deck of the wreck, I just rested to get my heart-rate down, breathed slower and all was fine. Later on, I realised I could have made my life easier just by tuning my reg to give me air more easily. And maybe descending slower.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Yeah, with hindsight, I know I wasn't exhaling enough. Instead, I kept topping off my lungs, and topping them off, and topping them off....

I know you need a level three to do most wrecks, but I don't know if I'll ever go beyond level two. J wants to go all the way to level four and wouldn't mind being an instructor. Me, I don't want that kind of responsibility. It confounds me to no end why I like diving, love discovering new underwater life, and yet consistently have the fear of going under. *sigh* Still working at overcoming it, though. I'm nothing if not stupid stubborn, or so it would appear.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

btw, do you have a yahoo account? Can you access it or is it down?