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Last week I was involved in the DIR-UK Sailing Ship Project which was to involve 9 dives to 50m or so over the week (only 6 were completed due to weather and boat issues). I was then going to dive at Vobster on the Saturday and Sunday on the DIR Experience Weekend organised by Garf and myself - also gave me a chance to wash my kit off!!

All last week went well, dives were fine, no issues on deco or afterwards and no signs of anything despite moving between 40 and 80 cylinders per night due to lack of air on the boat (O2 and He were, we just needed the air tops at Breakwater). There were many late nights and early mornings over the week and on Friday night I went to bed at midnight to get up at 05:30 to drive to Vobster!

Saturday's 2 dives were fine, max depth 10m, max time 45mins which included some time on the surface. Bed at 23:00 for an 06:00 get up on Sunday. I do suffer some land sickness (little lightheadedness but no nausea) and I had slept on the boat for the week so I was expecting this.

First dive on Sunday dropped down to 6m with Ben and had the worst vertigo I have ever had, lasted about 5-10 seconds but I needed to use the shot to reference myself. Once I was stabilised I was fine for the rest of Sunday and had no issues. Just tired as it had been a busy week.

Monday no issues apart from small muscle aches and twinges at wrist and shoulder joints, nothing staying in the same place or for anything longer than 10-15 minutes.

Tuesday no issues apart from same as above.

Wednesday walking around Portsmouth looking for the library carrying my laptop I noticed that I was getting slight pins and needles in the my right hand which had the laptop, thought 'Bugger, DCS and I'm off to Scapa in 2.5 weeks time', changed hands and the mild pins and needles subsided but they were appearing in the left hand now.

Mmmm. Lets try the other neuro test bits, closed eyes and walked along the pavement following the pavement slabs, after 10 steps I was still on the same line (couldn't feel the cracks so balance was there), closed eyes and touched nose and ear lobes. Swapped laptop back again and the P&N needles started to come back in the right and subside in the left.

Okay, lets make a phone call! This was quite hard as I knew if I was potted that Scapa would probably be history and I had been really looking forward to Scapa with the rest of TFT. Oh well....

Start driving to Poole as I had a fair idea that a doc would want to examine me. Ring the DDRC (thinking it was in Poole, knob!! Now have the correct Poole number!) and chatted with the Doc there who said that it was unlikely to be DCS because of the time intervals involved but that he couldn't make a definite call until he or someone else had seen me in person. I said I was driving to Poole at this time and he gave me the numbers for them and I rang Poole Hyberbaric Chamber.

The chamber isn't the easiest place to spot so after a quick circuit I parked up and walked in. Met by some very nice people and led into the examination room to talk through the dives and symptoms. I explained that there had been lots of kit moved last week but there hadn't been any symptoms of DCS last week as I would have thought that if I was going to take a hit because of the dives, it would have been then and he agreed.

The final prognosis was that the thin band of muscle/tendons which wrap around your wrist to keep the main tendons/blood vessles/nerves in place had become swollen due to the gear that was being carried around last week and that it was trapping the nerves/blood vessels in my wrist and causing the P&N. Cure was just to take some anti-inflamatories and rest it, and the next time I plan to be involved in moving tons (literally) of equipment around a quayside, do some weight training beforehand!!

So the good news was that I wasn't bent and I can still go to Scapa!!

Lessons Learned:

1. Don't be afraid to call the chamber, even if it means you are going to trash a trip you have had planned for 12 months.

2. Chambers don't automatically throw you in the pot, as Jim found out too.

3. There are other things which may cause bend-like symptoms so don't get completely hung-up about the signs being DCS BUT someone needs to make a medical judgement, not you.

Regards