My Near-Death Experience

Wednesday, 23 February 2005

SCUBA diving underwater is a surreal experience. After yesterday's five exercises in the pool, Cathy and I were both content with having an introduction to diving, being submerged underwater, practicing equalizing our masks, fin pivots, taking our regulators in and out, and just being comfortable with the BCD. My thing to work on was just focusing on breathing out of my mouth. For some reason, I have a tendency to breath with my nose underwater, which is odd because growing up, the doctor always scolded me for breathing too much out of my mouth and for not breathing out of my nose; but I have to work on it now, because it is working against me for diving. Yesterday, our nerves were tested for sure, and we were about ready to just call it quits after being in the pool, a little anxious that we'd be going to do these exercises in the open ocean today.

To make us even more anxious, we were in the classroom this morning learning about dive tables and the dangers of diving - oxygen toxicity, nitrogen narcosis, and decompression sickness. I learned a lot about it, and after lunch, we were still excited to go on our first two dives. First we headed to Ko Nangyuan, near the White Rock, then near the Japanese Gardens - Twins dive site. We descended on the rope and it was so amazing to feel that sense of weightlessness, like an astronaut, nothing like I've ever felt before! Seeing the bubbles and little bits of everything in the water was surreal, if not a bit scary really once you're completely submerged underwater. First you feel the currents, but as you go deeper, and descend to 12 meters, it's a whole beautiful scene down there...Holding hands with Rob, Cathy on his left, me on his right, we swam through beautiful corals and schools of fish, sea urchin, moray eels, sting rays, etc. We practiced the hand signals we learned in the pool, fin pivots, etc.

On our second dive, we had to take our regulators out and swap with our buddy's. This was scary as we sat on the bottom of the ocean floor, 12 meters deep. But, Cathy and I both did the exercises well, me focusing on my exhaling through my mouth only. Then, Rob took his regulator out and looked up towards the sky to make smoke rings. He had told us up on the boat that this is what we were going to do, so after he was finished, I gave it a go. My smoke rings were more like bubbles coming out of Nemo's mouth, but hey, I tried. When I turned my head back down, I ended up gulping a whole bunch of water. I went to put my regulator back in my mouth, and I started choking again. Unable to clear my regulator successfully, I kept taking more and more salt water in. Suddenly, I started panicking. My heart was racing, and my eyes were huge, as Rob stared at me through his mask. It's strange being in a situation where you cannot communicate with the other person by talking. Sitting on the ocean floor, I tried to control my breathing, but everytime I went to exhale, I coughed and choked on more water. My throat was all sore from the salt water, and even though I was scared to death, I trusted Rob and knew he wasn't going to let anything happen to me. I knew he would help get me through this tense situation. He pressed my perch button to force air into my mouth, and it helped a little, but I still had a whole bunch of water in my mouth and my regulator that I was unable to release. I knew he wasn't going to take me up to the surface unless totally necessary. All of a sudden, I felt myself stop breathing for a second. My heart literally just stopped.

Rob kept signaling me to breathe, exhale, and he pressed my perch button again to give me more oxygen. For the next 15 seconds or so, I knew it was only up to me. Rob was doing all he could to help me. I knew I had to focus on calming myself down, focus on my exhaling, and even though my throat completely hurt, and I was totally scared, I knew it was all I could do. After about a minute or so, I came to and was able to breathe again normally. I gave Rob the okay signal, but I couldn't look at anything or look at anyone for awhile, to calm myself completely. I held tight to Rob's hand the rest of the dive, and we swam by beautiful orange coral, angelfish, clownfish, sea urchin, and through schools of hundreds of tiny fish, for the next half hour. After awhile, my throat wasn't so sore anymore, and I concentrated on my breathing so I could enjoy the dive. When we surfaced, Cathy gave me a huge hug.

Rob wasn't supposed to dive with us today, but we had asked him to because we felt completely safe and trusted his 10 years of experience. After my near-death experience today, even though he was supposed to be on vacation himself, he said for sure he'd dive with us tomorrow. Although we joked about it, we told him he couldn't leave us now! I almost died! He agreed he'd stay with us throughout the rest of our course, as we discovered we were all leaving Ko Tao at the same time on Thursday anyway to head towards Bangkok.

We ate a buffet dinner tonight and got half-price drinks (as rewards from Rob) at Buddha Bar for finishing our dives. Even though it was scary today, both Cathy and I are having the time of our lives and really look forward to our last two dives. He warned us that we'll have to take our mask off underwater, but that's the only exercise, then we'll do some fun things. I'll be concentrating on my exhaling, WITHOUT complications tomorrow.