Just wanted to let everyone know what happen over the weekend, to try and prevent it from happening to anyone else. Saturday, mid-day I dove a wreck 120'. The fish were so thick and couple grouper over the 50lb mark. A few hours later I decided to dive the same wreck hoping to catch one of those monsters down there. While I was down there I finally shot the fish I was looking for. Bad shot and he went nutts. He made into the wreck where we got caught up for quit awhile. After untangling myself I realized he was still on the other end of my gun and still in the wreck with it. As it was a brand new gun I really didnt want to leave it behind knowing I didnt have any dives left. ( Not Smart ) I finally got the fish and the gun out. After looking at my gauges I realized I had been down for 20+ minutes and without much air. I got to my safety stop and stayed there as long as I could until my air ran out. As soon as I made it to the boat I started to have bad pains all over my body. All my joints hurt worse then any feeling I have ever felt. About 20 minutes later my legs started to become numb. Within a half hour I lost complete feeling in my legs and could no longer move them. We decided to go back to shore. On the way in started to get slight feeling back and limp around. I went immediately to the hospital where I stayed for 3 days. They put me into the decompression chamber 3 times for 6 hours each. I've been to a nuerologist sense then trying to figure out if I will be able to walk normal again and get all my feeling back. They told me it is a slow process. They said the nitrogen bubbles got into my spinal cord and did some damage. I'm waiting now for a MRI to see if they can see anything. I just wanted to share this story with everyone to let everyone know that it is real. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask. When I went to the hospital know one knew anything of it and was quit scary at first. I finally got in touch with D.A.N. and they talked to my doctors and helped me out alot.

Casey,

I hope you have a full and swift recovery. Thank you for sharing your story. If you have DAN insurance let us know which plan you have and how they are responding to your situation.

FYI, I'm going to move this thread to the Safety section.

Not that it would've changed the outcome of the situation but were you wearing a computer?

"I hope you have a full and swift recovery. Thank you for sharing your story. If you have DAN insurance let us know which plan you have and how they are responding to your situation. "


I did not have DAN insurance, but I made sure my health insurance covered everything before I started diving. They will give free advice without a membership. If not, I dont know what my doctors would have done. That was the worst part of the whole thing.

I have a few more questions:

What mix were you diving? I'm assuming nitrox or air?

Did you have any O2 on the boat? Or tanks of nitrox?

Did you lay down on the boat assuming you're legs were not working?

How long before you made it back to shore and to the hospital?

And would the coast guard chopper have gotten you to a chamber faster than you did?

What did the hospital do for you before you called DAN? Sounds like they were clueless.

Just wondering what I would have done. I keep a DAN O2 kit on the boat, probably need more O2 than I have. I think breathing any nitrox mix you had couldn't hurt with higher O2 than air. Laying down may prevent cerebral embolisms.

Thank you for sharing and I hope your back to 100% soon.

I was diving a nitrox mix of about 29.5%.

No oxygen on the boat.

My legs just basically collapsed on me. I had no choice but to lay down.

It was about 3 hours before I made it back to shore. Probably could of been back sooner but I just didnt want to admit it was happening to me. I just couldnt believe it.

The hospital put me in the chamber for 6 hours and let me out and told me to come back in 2 days. After I got out of the chamber I had no change. Same feelings in my legs and had to be wheel chaired to my car. Thats when I decided to do some research. I went to DAN's website and realized they offered free advice and called them up. They were so helpful. They told me to go back to the hospital immediately. He talked to my doctor and after that I felt alot better about the situation and my doctor all of a sudden knew alot more too. DAN even talked to my neurologist.

I would of done so many things different looking back now. I kind of let my ego get in the way.

That friday I had my battery in my computer changed and for some reason it would not turn on, on my 2nd dive. Worked on my first. I still dont know whats going on with that.

[QUOTE=chuckd;71185]I have a few more questions:

And would the coast guard chopper have gotten you to a chamber faster than you did?


Casey :

Sorry to hear about this . Especally since I sounds like you were out in the Gulf. I wish you a speedy recovery . As for the quote above , assuming you were out in the Gulf round Ft Myers , it is very rare the Coasties will send a chopper . Sad but true the closest one to us is Saint Pete . and at best the locals around here will only come a few miles off shore.

Just wanted to let everyone know what happen over the weekend, to try and prevent it from happening to anyone else. Saturday, mid-day I dove a wreck 120'. The fish were so thick and couple grouper over the 50lb mark. A few hours later I decided to dive the same wreck hoping to catch one of those monsters down there. While I was down there I finally shot the fish I was looking for. Bad shot and he went nutts. He made into the wreck where we got caught up for quit awhile. After untangling myself I realized he was still on the other end of my gun and still in the wreck with it. As it was a brand new gun I really didnt want to leave it behind knowing I didnt have any dives left. ( Not Smart ) I finally got the fish and the gun out. After looking at my gauges I realized I had been down for 20+ minutes and without much air. I got to my safety stop and stayed there as long as I could until my air ran out. As soon as I made it to the boat I started to have bad pains all over my body. All my joints hurt worse then any feeling I have ever felt. About 20 minutes later my legs started to become numb. Within a half hour I lost complete feeling in my legs and could no longer move them. We decided to go back to shore. On the way in started to get slight feeling back and limp around. I went immediately to the hospital where I stayed for 3 days. They put me into the decompression chamber 3 times for 6 hours each. I've been to a nuerologist sense then trying to figure out if I will be able to walk normal again and get all my feeling back. They told me it is a slow process. They said the nitrogen bubbles got into my spinal cord and did some damage. I'm waiting now for a MRI to see if they can see anything. I just wanted to share this story with everyone to let everyone know that it is real. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask. When I went to the hospital know one knew anything of it and was quit scary at first. I finally got in touch with D.A.N. and they talked to my doctors and helped me out alot.


Thanks for sharing your story, it should serve as a eye opener for everyone. The lesson learned for everyone is........"no fish or piece of gear is worth risking your personal safety for"...............EVER!

Spearfishing is a fun & very exciting sport, but it can also be deadly. This is very self evident as we have lost many good friends during the past 5 years. The irony is, you can do everything right and still end up a statistic! Therefore, you need to find a way to stack the deck in your favor (safety wise) whenever you can.

From my personal experience, most decompression related injuries are a direct result of running out of air. Unfortunately, this happens way too often to spearfisherman because it is very easy to get caught up in the excitement of the dive, you lose track of time & air, and all the sudden you find yourself in a near panic, or full panic situation. If you overstay your time but you still have plenty of air, the situation is much more easily controlled. However, if you are low, or out of air, your options are very limited and the likelihood of serious injury or death increase dramatically.

When I was commercial spearfishing, I preached "air discipline" to everyone who worked on my boat. I enforced the 1000 lb rule: your gauge hits 1000 lbs, you finish up immediatly, and you start your ascent. Therefore you had plenty of air to make a proper ascent and still hit the boat with 500 lbs of air. If someone handed me a tank with less than 500 lbs of air in it, they were done diving for the rest of the day. If the diver had less than 500 lbs but he had been hanging on my deco line for quite a while, I cut him a little slack. Deco is good, no deco is bad!

I did a 3 to 5 minute hang on every dive I made, whether it was required or not. This way I built a good safety margin into every dive. This is very important if you plan to do multiple drops per day, and especially important if you are going to dive several days in a row. I dove air throughout my career so I had to be extra careful.

caseyc, I sincerely hope you make a full recovery so you can go back to diving & spearfishing. However, keep in mind that once you take a hit, you could be a little more prone to taking another hit in the future. You might want to reduce your depth exposure, reduce your bottom times, and do a safety stop on every dive to build yourself a little greater margin of safety.

Invaluable info.. Thanks Kevin.:toast:

Thanks so much for sharing with everyone Casey. I know it's not an easy or fun topic to talk about, but I know this discussion can help a lot of other people. I know it will make me stop and think next time that big one is just out of reach.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you for a complete and full recovery. Hang in there buddy.

Casey
Thanks for sharing your story. There are many people out there that are too proud to admit error or ignorance...
Safety is paramount at any depth with any style of diving..Our physiological makeup changes daily putting us at risk one day and not the next. If we err to the side of caution "ROUTINELY"..lives will be saved...Thanks again and be well....

Thank you for sharing. I hope you recover soon.

It is a really humbling feeling to admit and come to grip with the fact that you were twisted. I took almost full year off after my trip to the chamber. When i did return to diving, it has been slow and very cautious return.

My ego too was bruised, and I carried an immense amount of self shame. I was really surprised to learn how many people I knew who had had their own stories. I found that it helped to talk to these friends about it. Here is a link to my story, if you ever want to talk about it shoot me a PM and I will get you my number. Keep the faith and take it slow.
http://spearfishingplanet.com/showthread.php?t=701

When I wasn’t magically better after my treatment, I called Dan and expressed my concerns. They explained to me that even though I didn’t have any visible sign of trauma that my body had just experienced trauma akin to a car accident and that it would take a while to recover.

Thanks for sharing and I wish you a speedy recovery.

Chris