dcs question

[Erik]

Roland my friend, I would recommend that you speak to DAN and/or a hyperbaric doctor before arriving at a prognosis and then self-medicating. There is no substitute for an actual assessment amigo! The outcome may be better than expected.
Best wishes sidiki,
Erik

[immerlustig]

erik

very true indeed. i already emailed around and will hopefully get some tests done the next week or so.
however, since dcs in freediving is obviously not that common i try to gather as much information as possible.

cheers

roland

[samdive]

I had residual nerve and tissue damage - I still do. Hence the long recovery time. It took about 6 months to get full sensation back in my leg and a year before the joint damage healed. (I was misdiagnosed with ligament strain at first so sat around with with some bubbles in my knee joint for rather too long which meant it damaged the tissues, had I been treated quicker, there would not have been such residual damage)

I can now only scuba dive on nitrox, and keep shallow and sensible.

Freediving - well I just try and keep reasonable surface intervals (at least 5 mins) and drink loads. Occasionally I get minor symptoms - mainly tingles, extreme fatigue or a strange kind of brain drain that I now believe is DCS - and if so I drink loads of water, sleep and sometimes hit the oxygen. They go away pretty quick with lots of water

Sam

[efattah]

Roland,

How fast do you ascend during your dives? How fast do you ascend during the last 10-15m? Perhaps a slower ascent in the last 15m might help, or even a short 'deco stop in apnea.'

However, given your profiles, it does seem that you are very susceptible to DCS.


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

[John A]

Just read all of the posts and one question comes to mind, are you going to the dive site via a boat, if so, is there the chance of CO build-up any where you are sitting, or exhaust rolling back into the cockpit of the boat? Symptoms sound a lot like CO/CO2 problem since the condition alleviates itself after 24-48 hrs. DCS neurological hits usually don’t clear up that quick. Or, do you smoke? Hope that helps

[glennv]

Well , last week i rode with him to his divesites (dahab, Blue hole) and i must say the taxi rides where not very healthy for he lungs.
Beaten up old trucks smelling of heavy petrol fumes, CO and CO2 (although CO is odourless i had to assume there was lots of it present). Got me sick every time.
Interesting thought.......

[John A]

You are right that CO in odor-less, but if you are smelling the fumes from the car, you are getting a lot of CO. CO bonds twice as fast with the red blood cells as does O2. So, you start the dive with lots of CO in the blood stream blocking the O2, now add the increase CO2 build up and you can see a pattern here. His symptoms sounded very close to what my buddy experienced after a dive on a dive boat (both of us experienced divers and trimix cert.) rainy day so he stayed below with all the diesel fumes in the cockpit and I stayed on the deck in the rain. He could barely get out of bed the rest of the day, I felt fine.

[immerlustig]

john a:

interesting input. i just checked my log.

26th and 27th august, the first 2 days of symptoms, were done after a jeep ride.
1st sept, 40m, no symptoms, no jeep ride.
4th sept, 46m, no symptoms, jeep ride
6th sept, 48m, symptoms, jeep ride.

i couldn't really say wether the exhaust fumes are somewhat connected to all this. also, how should co cause these symptoms? there is about 2 hours between the 30min drive and the time of my last dive. so i would guess that whatever co causes should happen before my dives rather than after. even if i have lesser o2 transport because of co i'd think that the result should be a more demanding dive. but i don't have this impression. recoveries are easy. maybe you can answer that. anyhow, i think that this is worth thinking about.

eric:

my ascent rates are between 0.86 - 0.92m/s (i dive bi-fins only). how long a 'deco' stop would you think is useful/recommended?

sam:


the residual damage after an episode is actually what concerns me most. sounds also like yours was a more serious case than mine. sorry to hear that.
i visited the chamber yesterday and wasn't really surprised by the non-specific treatment and medication i got prescribed. the doc admitted of not having experience with freediver-dcs, did a simple skin sensory test, and sent me home with 'stay dry for another week, take b6/12 for 10 days, take rehydration salts'.
i take those vitamins (plus other supplements) for 3 months already on a daily basis, plus, being in egypt, i add rehydration powders to every bottle of water i drink. so somehow i still didn't get further.

however, has anyone any info regarding the recovery time of nerve tissue?

thanks again for all the suggestions and contributions.

regards

roland

[DeepThought]

Originally posted by immerlustig
however, has anyone any info regarding the recovery time of nerve tissue?

Yes, I heard of a case in which some guy where I used to scuba never recovered - lost control of his lower part of the body . I keep that as one of the exmaples on how dangerous DCS can be.

[immerlustig]

hi michael

maybe i should rephrase it : how long does damaged (not dead!) nerve tissue take to recover?

greets

r

[John A]

Your post has forced me to learn more about CO poisoning, and the more I read, the more it sounds like your problem. From my quick search I have found that CO bonds with the red blood cells 200 times faster then O2, also it can take up to 9 hours or more to “clean” your system of the CO, and the symptoms are very close to the symptoms of a DCS neurological hit.
So, you drive to the dive site in a jeep that is pumping out lots of CO and you are breathing it in, now you exert your self in such a manner where you are depleting your body of O2 and building up CO2, than you drive home in the same environment. Over a couple of days you are not giving you body (brain) the time to purge itself from the CO, you continue to build on it. Good news is that there is a simple blood test for CO, should you experience this again and conditions are the same (smelly jeep ride), may be a good idea to take the test. You may have a lower tolerance to CO than other people.
Medical treatment of sever CO poisoning is hyperbaric O2. I wonder how many cases of DCS are really CO poisoning? I really believe that CO is a much greater problem (especially on dive boat with enclose cabins/cockpits) than the industry realizes and is often mis-diagnosed as DCS.

[immerlustig]

hi john a

usually i have just 1 dive session a day meaning a 24 hour intervall between dives. also on most days i dive at the 'house reef' and don't take that ride with the jeep. so accumulation can't happen given there is more than 9 hours between rides.

on the other hand i can't really tell if my co-intake from the exhaust fumes is always the same. i try to find some info on co poisoning, though.

thanx

roland

[DeepThought]

I just remembered... another good "source" for CO in the blue hole was that awful disel opperated pumps they turned on sometimes while we were resting before/between dives. Usally the smoke came right in the sitting area.
I think they pumped sea water for the toilets or soemthing like that, which was clearly not as important as our well beings.

[efattah]

It takes more than 24 hours to get rid of carbon monoxide from your body.

I used to have a detector which was like a 'breathalizer' which could detect your blood CO level by exhaling into it.

I measured my level, 0ppm (in expired gas). Then, I went into the garage, and inhaled some car exhaust fumes right at the muffler. Just ONE breath.

Then, my CO level jumped to 24ppm, and after 24 hours I think it was still 2 or 3ppm.

I was on a boat once with a very dirty engine (blue exhaust). The CO detector went into alarm mode, as the CO in the air was more than 1000ppm. The CO in the air was so high, for so long, that the detector broke. It said in the manual that extreme concentrations of CO would 'break' the sensor, and it did.

I tried not to inhale the blue fumes. But, there was no escape. When we got into the water, I had the worst dive session of my life. My apneas would feel extremely strange----hypoxia without hypercapnia. Hypoxic contractions after 0'55" in static, without any CO2 buildup!


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

[samdive]

be careful guys! don't forget CO in your bloodstream is not only going to affect your hypoxia but also become toxic in itself as you get deeper.

if you think you may have inhaled boat fumes on your breathe up.. don't dive until you feel completely clear (if at all). We were all freediving off a RIB a couple of weeks ago and you could see the fumes on people's breath - nasty stuff

and yes DCS can affect you for life. My symptoms are pretty minor but with me forever. Physio has helped a bit. I have a friend who had completely learn to walk again and still needs to use a stick - and she's only in her mid twenties. Nerves that die don't tend to regrow...

so yes, take it seriously, on scuba or freediving but particularly if you do both!

Sam