Decompression Sickness

I’m talking about decompression sickness, DCS. In everyday talk also referred to as the Bends. The tiny nitrogen bubbles that we have all become aquainted with when taking our diving certificates. This actually happened to me. Me, a cautious and careful ”whimp diver”. How could this have happened? I really didn’t do anything wrong, at least that’s what I thought at the time...

Before I continue, I would like to tell you that today I am basically completely recovered, with no long term consequences from this. I also know a whole lot more about diving medicine and recompression chamber treatment than I ever wanted to know...

Below I give you a rather detailed description of what happened, both from a technical and an emotional point of view. It’s quite a long story, but hopefully worth reading. I try to be as honest as possible about what mistakes I may have made, in order to give other people a chance to learn something from it. I am determined to make sure something good comes out of this, and if I can make at least one diver think twice and be more careful when diving in the future, I am satisfied. However, my intention is not to scare anyone away from trying scuba diving, or to make any divers quit. You shouldn’t do that! I may have to give up scuba diving myself, but in that case it is for purely medical reasons; a person who has been bent once is more likely to get bent again.

Those of you who work as divemasters or instructors, I recommend you to read this story as a positive example of how to take care of a diver in distress. I was really lucky because when I got bent I was immediately  in very good hands. I received very competent care from the minute I got sick, and those who took care of me handled me and the whole situation in the best possible way. All this made me feel relatively safe and calm, even though I knew in what serious condition I actually was.

Everyone who is reading this, you are more than welcome to give this URL (the web address) to everyone you know, divers or others who might be interested. The more people who read this, the better, as far as I am concerned. If someone has a web site with links about diving, you are welcome to put this site among the links if you like.If a dive club (or someone else) would be interested in me coming to visit you and talking to you in person about my experiences, I’d be more than willing to do that, if you pay for my trip (I live in Uppsala, Sweden).

My story is rather personal, and I know that this way I expose my ”clumsiness” to the rest of the world, to some extent. Despite this, I have made the choice to tell this to as many people as possible, in order to prevent more divers to end up in the same situation as Idid. You see, I really don’t think my clumsiness is so much worse than the clumsiness of the average diver. If someone, after reading the whole story, wants to ask me something or discuss this, you are more than welcome to do so, either in the usenet newsgroup rec.scuba or privately via email. I look forward to many interesting discussions, especially about the things I say in the chapter ”critisism”. I am especially interested in getting in touch with divers who have first hand experience with DCS themselves.

A final note: When you read the story, please bear in mind that english is not my first language (I am swedish). Although I use english a lot and feel rather comfortable with my vocabulary, I’m sure there are mistakes here and there. In a foreign language, it is especially difficult to describe emotions, but I try the best I can to describe to you how I felt. Those of you who are native english speakers, feel free to contact me and correct me, if you find anything in my story confusing or incomprehensible.

Dive safely!

Anja Johansson

My story in web format, if you want to read it online

My story in pdf format, if you want to download it, print it and read it on the bus

To read the pdf file you need Acrobat Reader, which you can dowload from here:

If you don't have my email address already, you can contact me by trimming the address below appropriately:

Anja_Json.remove@nospam.hotmail.com

(I do like this to avoid, if possible, getting a lot of spam about various porn sites, how to build your own cable TV descrabler or how to get rich quick through multilevel marketing without working...)