|
I was on a six day diving holiday in Scapa Flow with the Jesters BSAC, based
in Chester, and it was at the end of the fourth day when I got smitten. Due to
very high winds we had not dived the third day so I would have been well
decompressed when we dived on the fourth day.
We did two dives that day. In the morning we dived on a trawler, the James
Barrie, which was lying in 43 metres of water. It was an Icelandic vessel
returning from Hull to Iceland when somebody accidentally bumped it against the
Orkney Islands. It sank. The Icelandic's never could hold their beer.
The dive was good, the visibility was not less than 20 metres. My buddy,
Richard Lockett, was doing some photography so the dive was leisurely. The wreck
was intact lying on sand, it was so clear and bright I didn't need to use my
torch outside the wreck.
We had just short of 20 minutes bottom time, I was on air, Richard was on 25%
nitrox. At 18 metres I changed on to my pony, which had a 45% nitrox mix, and we
were using air-tabled computers.
Following our computer instructions we had deco stops of 2 minutes at 6 metres
and 15 minutes at 3 metres. We used a delayed SMB and there was no surface swell to
pull us about at 3 metres. A print out from my computer later showed that we had
stuck to the times and depths requested by the computer.
After a three and half hour surface interval we dived on a first world war
submarine the UB 116. It was sunk by depth charges when it tried to enter Scapa
Flow. After the war it was lifted and moved into shallower water to make
salvaging easier, but when divers examined it they found a live torpedo in one
of its tubes. The navy turned out and decided it was safer to blow it up.
Charges were set and the naval vessel fired them off creating a big explosion.
Unfortunately the royal navy boys had not been paying too much attention and
their vessel had drifted with the tide. So much so it was directly above the sub
when they blew it up. The navy boat did not sink but the blast trashed
everything that was breakable in the boat and in true navy tradition, buggered
the boat's bottom. The sub got its own back.
However, back to the plot. We did the dive, the sub should have been at 26
metres it wasn't it was at 30 metres. Visibility was poor, about 3 to 4 metres at best
and the sub was basically an underwater scrap yard. The dive plan was not to get
into heavy deco so as soon as we approached it, we ascended.
As previously I moved on to my pony at 18 metres and we were diving on air
tables. We had a 4 minute decompression stop at 3 meters whilst on an SMB. We had collected a
minutes decompression and we stuck on 3 minutes for safety's sake. A computer run off
later showed we had once more followed our computers to the letter.
Within an hour of getting back into the boat one of my appendages started to
feel stiff, tingly and numb (my right leg, just in case you were thinking of
anything else!). I went on to oxygen, drank loads of water and after 20 minutes
the symptoms began to subside.
Within half an hour the boat berthed at a nearby jetty where an ambulance was
waiting, the rest of the lads were fed up because they wanted an helicopter not
an ambulance, they had their cameras ready and everything. There was a giggle
going on, the buzz was that Richard (my buddy) had come up with a bent Dick! Ha.
Ha!
In the ambulance I was put on a drip and continued with oxygen until we
reached the Stromness decompression chamber. My buddy went along with me as he
had been subject to the same diving pattern. A lady doctor was waiting at
Stromness and wanted to know how much deco I had missed. She was not impressed
when I said none. Fortunately the computer run outs later confirmed what I had
said.
She did a physical examination and couldn't find anything (funny that's what
my wife says) and I went into the deco chamber for four and three quarter hours
on Treatment Table 6, US Navy. I was with an attendant who kept me entertained with
gory and lurid tales of deco sessions he had dealt with in the past.
The following morning I attended the doctor's local surgery. She and two
other doctors in the practice, had gone over my notes and with it being Scapa
Flow they were very expert in DCI. Their considered opinion was that they really
had no firm idea what had caused the incident.
I had a neurological bend that meant that I had a bubble of nitrogen in the
spine somewhere, which was pressing on a nerve. They checked on how much beer I
had drunk on the night before I said about 3 or 4 pints spread over the entire
evening with a meal. They seemed unconcerned about this saying the norm in the
Orkneys was about 10 pints a night. I was just a namby-pamby Yorkshire puff!!
The doctor's final assessment was that the cause was probably dehydration.
Divers tend not to drink enough between dives. (Who wants to go to the loo with
all that kit on?) It is apparently a known medical fact that the hydrostatic
pressure effect of water when diving causes a loss of body fluids in a diver.
Two dives a day, especially when they are deep, without re-hydrating properly
can be a problem. The doctors considered any dive below 30 metres to be heavy
diving and any weakness in physical condition and/or diving practice, was likely
to show up in some way, sometimes dramatically.
With regard to future diving the doctors said in their opinion there was no
need to give it up. They suggested no alcohol the evening before a dive (that's
worse than the bends), ensure good hydration, if deep dives are being done e.g.
30 metres plus, only do one dive a day.
They made the point that decompression tables and diving computers are not an
exact science. They are our best reference but they were put together based on
the experiences of navy divers who would have been fit, 20 year old sailors not
more mature less fit club members, and that's being polite.
The doctor's final advice was no diving for a month. If I returned home
within 48 hours of the incident, don't fly, don't drive on a route that takes
you over high ground e.g. in Scotland follow the coast road via Aberdeen, keep
off Shap on the M6, etc.
On my return home I booked myself a session with the Club diving medical expert,
Dr. Ian
Sibley Calder. Ian did a thorough examination and came to very much the same
conclusions as the Orkney doctors. Watch hydration, when doing deep dives always
err on the safe side and consider only doing one dive a day when into plus 30
meter depths. Both sets of doctors recommended going onto nitrox for all of the
dive, not just on decompression.
Well those are the facts. I did everything by the book but I still got hit. I'm
going to follow their advice with future diving and I hope to steer clear of
further trouble. I hope there's some useful information for my readers? If your
still awake, happy diving.
Dick Groke, 21 November 2002
|
