Have you gotten bent?

[OFG-1]

Ok Andrew, just to be certain, you are asking how many times I have BEEN bent, NOT how many time I have been TOLD to go get bent. Right?

[aainslie]

Ok Andrew, just to be certain, you are asking how many times I have BEEN bent, NOT how many time I have been TOLD to go get bent. Right?

Yup, and we're not talking bent (as in warped (as in your humour)).

[saturation]

A very interesting poll. It would also be good to add how many career dives did the diver have, so we can estimate the frequency of getting bent.

The issue of getting bent has always bugged me. A common story is, dive technical long enough, get bent.

I can say that is not necessarily true. I have over 1300 dives, over 500 are technical decompression dives with maximum run times 3-4 hours long, and so far, clean. About 2 years ago, also started doing doppler on myself after most dives. Zero bubble grade using VPM-B or GF. My buddy is the same way too and we dive similar tables.

It would seem my number is coming up, but I would think a modern technical diver pays greater heed to risk factors for bends and actively seeks to avoid them all.

[dogwatch]

Should there be a catagory for "mild" type II ?

[aainslie]

Should there be a catagory for "mild" type II ?

Well, how finely can you skin a cat?

Like I said, I wanted to keep it simple. Neuro/AGE/lung bends just aren't ever "mild" IMHO. And I'm MOST interested in the fact that 45% of people responding have had SOME incident. That's huge.

[BobK]

Well, how finely can you skin a cat?

Like I said, I wanted to keep it simple. Neuro/AGE/lung bends just aren't ever "mild" IMHO. And I'm MOST interested in the fact that 45% of people responding have had SOME incident. That's huge.

Yup. Doesn't seem to match up with DAN or PADI numbers. Of course, this is a very small sample, and many OW divers probably don't consider being bent unless the pain is dramatic.

[sskasser]

"Incident" is very subjective, unless it is a somewhat serious hit. I may have some bruising and muscle aches, but figure they're just souveniers from gear handling, etc. My buddy (in the general sense, no one specific) may get the same bruising and call it skin bends, or get some muscle aches and call it a "minor hit."

[drtyjrzy]

I took a mild hit a year or two ago while diving OC here in Jersey, surfaced from the dive and felt the pain right away. The capt. of the boat, who is also a good friend of mine made me go on O2 and made me eat some asprin, at it's worst, I couldn't move my left arm and the pain was unbearable. After about two hours on O2, I was pain free.
While I was driving home, pain came back big time, went to the hospt. I work for, they transfered me to Jacoby in NYC, took a chamber ride there, problem solved. No lingering problems and I'm still diving, so thats good. My insurance picked up half the bill, DAN got the rest. In total it cost just under 30k USD. Two ER visits, Critical Care Ambulance ride, and the chamber.

Turns out my computer(vr3) pooped the bed, and I didn't have a BT with me so I was unsure how long I was down. After talking with the capt. we estimated I was down for a little over an hour at 80fsw, and made a direct assent to the surface. Not a good scene howeve you won't catch me without a backup timer anymore......I was not really thinking anything could go wrong on an 80ft wreck I had been on hundreds of times.
Paule

[sskasser]

Having been on the wreck hundreds of times, it didn't strike you as odd that you were making a direct ascent when normally you would have had to make a stop or two?

What sort of failure did you have on the VR3? Was it giving you erroneous information that you unknowingly followed, or did it bail on you and leave you to figure out a plan? If it's the first one, that's pretty scary!

[aainslie]

One interesting point - the percentage for no hits has been slowly trending upwards. Since the frequency with which you look at the board will be highly correlated with your inter-visit period (well, perfectly actually), which in turn are correlated with any given inter-visit period, one might infer from this that the more often you look at this board, the more likely you are to have been bent!