Posted by MHK on November 06, 2001 at 17:50:08:
In Reply to: To be fair to Ken... posted by msblucow on November 06, 2001 at 17:38:46:
Marta,
One of the reasons that you see me on here all the time recomending additional QUALITY training is so that we can keep the issue open and that is also why I want to commend you for the fortitude to publish your account of what happened..
This list has a tendancy during certain discussion to ignore salient advice when the discussion is theoretical in nature. When we have a fatality, we always here that it's speculation and thus, once again, the salient issues get misdirected or discarded because * we don't know* since the person is dead.. Accident analysis is a VERY important part of our sport, which is why DAN publishes it's book..
In the instant case, we have a regular poster to the list, probably one of the most level headed people on the list, and you candidly allowed us to review what happened and hopefully we can all learn from it..
To that end, I don't think staying at 15' for a few more minutes would have helped one way or the other.. I can't disagree with Ken anymore then I do and my reason is as follows:
You were already in decompression [ according to your computer] as such you are looking to *off gas* and using a standard 21% mix at 15' you have a P02 of .3, which is virtually meaningless as a decompression tool.... By using an elevated F02 mix DURING your dive, you would have avoided the ENTIRE problem to begin with and you would not have had to worry about some ad hoc solution during the dive...
All of that being said, I still believe after evaluating your profile that you should not have suffered a hit, but that is why we call it deco THEORY and not science, because the variables still exist...
What I hope most take away from your experience is to be pro active and solve the problem BEFORE it occurs, and not hope to be practiced or skilled enough at developing ad hoc solutions on the fly...
Thanks