I was discharged from hospital the next day. Seven days later, one day after I got back to work, I found myself back in hospital. I was having considerable difficulty breathing and was in a lot of pain. Still, not wanting to wait for the evening or even for my wife to fetch me, I drove myself back to the clinic. A very good thing as it turned out. It transpired that I had a blood clot in my lung, or a Pulmonary Oedema. It may have been my body reacting to the implant and trying to heal it or just the inactivity of a week in bed at home. It appeared that combined with the blood thinning medication (which is standard with this kind of operation) the clot came loose and lodged in my lung. Almost 25% of my lung was affected and I was placed in the care of Dr Verena Ballhausen a specialist physician pulmonologist. Basically a lung specialist. She put me on a strong blood thinner called Warfaren for six months and blood test almost every two weeks. That became my routine for the next few months. Gradually we were able to drop back to one test a month and reduce the Warfaren to a minimum. I could only hope that at the end of six months I would be cleared to dive again. Even though I could not dive, we’d agreed that Verna’s preparation for her record attempt later in the year had to go ahead. I would assist where ever I could.
Face to face with fear- Verna’s very close call
On the 11th of April 2004, we had one of the most frightening moments of all my years doing this sort of deep cave diving. On that day we had gone out to Badgat to do surface support for Verna. She’d intended to do a five and a half hour dive to around 160 metres, to give herself the experience of doing such a long dive before she attempted the world record. Still on the Waferen blood thinner, I could not yet dive but I went along as surface and moral support anyway. Derek, John and Gareth would do the deep support in the cave system. The morning started well enough and Verna got in the water more or less on time.
To reach her target depth Verna would have to go down the main shaft and into the inclined shaft at 110 metres again. She went in and the rest of us waited. Derek, doing deep support, left and we waited. About half an hour elapsed and the next support diver went in (bear in mind, we at the surface had no word of Verna since she’d left). All we could do was wait on the surface and trust in our friend’s ability and resolve to come back safely. Little did we realise the life and death struggle that had taken place below the tranquil waters.
Verna told us later that deep in the inclined shaft, alone and in the dark, she had become trapped, by of all things, one of her fins. To this day she’s not sure how or what part of the fin got stuck. Suffice it to say that she seriously thought she was not going to make it out alive. She was so effectively jammed that she could initially not move. You need to appreciate her predicament, not only was she trapped in a cave, but she was trapped in an underwater maze, 150 metres under solid rock and underwater.
The level of visibility had dropped from about six metres to only a few centimetres. Her precious gas supplies were very, very rapidly dwindling. At that depth she was breathing more than ten times the amount of gas she does on the surface. She could almost see the contents gauge dropping towards empty with every breath she took. If she panicked, she had seconds to live. If she didn’t get free she had minutes to live. After a terrifying few minutes she was able to tear off her fin and swim in the direction she hoped was the correct way out.
She had only her memory of one previous experience being in the incline shaft to help her remember which way was out. Finally she regained the bottom of the main shaft. Still 100 metres deep, but at least help was available in the form of Derek her deep support. She knew she’d run low on bottom gas, but decided to push until she had no more back-gas available and then only use up her bailout cylinder. By then she should be close to her Nitrox cylinders. Eventually Gareth met Verna at about forty metres and saw her lack of a fin. He very chivalrously gave her one of his and swam out with only one. After a very harrowing three and half hour dive Verna eventually broke the surface, only to be in acute breathing distress almost immediately. We got her out of her dry suit and immediately called DAN. Dr Hermie Brits once again gave us very good advice. As far as we could see Verna had a form of pulmonary oxygen poisoning. Since she was well within the recommended limits for pure oxygen, perhaps her breathing difficulty was a result of the very large amount of cold, dry helium she’d breathed at depth. Nonetheless Dr Brits asked us to check Verna into Barberton Hospital for a night’s observation. With Gods grace, Verna made a full recovery. Incredibly, in October 2004, within a month of this nerve shattering dive Verna went on to become the deepest scuba diving woman in history.
The following is an extract of her impression and thoughts during that harrowing dive.
“...This was supposed to be a simple 160 meter dive, equivalent to 220 metres [because of altitude] and my final build up for Boesmans. Broken into its individual elements, there should be nothing to scare me, nothing I had not done before. Yet the last two times I had swum down to the incline shaft I had been petrified. An unreasoning fear, a passionate desire not to be at 105 metres, not to die. OK, so the incline shaft is perhaps not such a simple dive. In fact it scares the bejeezers out of a lot of people. It requires a four minute swim at 105 metres just to get to the start. The shaft itself is confining with layers of silt just waiting to majestically cloud out the visibility. Its size means you are always close to the silt at the bottom, almost scraping the concrete roof above you. Perhaps not wide enough to touch both sides, but down there it certainly feels like it. The angle requires that you swim to get your depth. The exposure is extreme; a fast ascent rate is not possible because of the incline. Logically, nothing to fuss about, all it requires is practice and discipline. [...] I was trapped! Unable to go forward, more importantly, unable to go back. Derek would be arriving soon, meeting me at the top of the incline shaft. I would not be there. Would he be able to see my light? What would go through his head? Would he extend his bottom time, extend his depth in the vain hope that I would appear? People would be waiting on the surface, no tension or concern; this was just another dive, not expecting anything to go wrong. These are all people I call friends, people I have known for a while. People I care about, care whether they live or die. My track record was solid, no major incidents, and no problems. This was a depth I was accustomed to so why should anything go wrong this time? I knew what I was doing, this was a dive I had done before; I was invincible. I had to be invincible; there was no other way to get into the water. Yet this time I would not appear. [...] The battle was not yet over. I now had to swim 60 metres with no fin at 105 metres. I had one emergency bailout left on me and gratefully reached for it. Would it be enough to get me to my last helium cylinder?
It was an impossible thought then, dying after I had freed myself. If I was going to die in a cave it would need to be stuck, back there in the silt at 152 metres and not because I had simply run out of stuff to breathe.
The ascent was taking forever, I was breathing too much, taking too long. I had changed over to my second back mount when I started the ascent, then been slowed down by the second entanglement, I had maybe two minutes left on that. No matter how hard I tried to calm myself, I could not get my heart to slow down, to stop using so much precious, precious helium! I was damned if I was going to die on my way out just because I could not breathe slower.
Suddenly, light up ahead; Derek, my deep support. And then I really realised how bad this really had become. Before hand dying was something I would do alone, it would have no immediate impact on the people waiting for me. The only decision they would have to make is when to retrieve my body. Now I was involving someone I knew, well. Would he be able to just leave me and save his own life? Somehow I thought not! He would try and swim me to the incline or share his gas with me. We would both die here in this small and uninteresting, silt infested shaft.
I checked my back mounts: 30 bar left, no way enough mix to get back to the main shaft. Thank God for anal back up planning. I still had my full emergency cylinder left. My
best swim here normally used an entire cylinder of Trimix. Now I would be doing it with one fin, trying to hold my breath. The dive plan said I needed 6000 litres of helium to make it out; I had half that. The emergency plan we had set was simple, remove as many of the deep stops as I could, break the deco if need be, worry about the bends when I surfaced, just stay alive long enough to surface. [...]My fin is still there at 152 metres. I have no plans to go and retrieve it. […] But maybe, one day I will be enticed back, to face my fear. Then again, maybe there are other places for me to go, fears to face. I am not in a hurry to die. Yesterday seems like a lifetime ago. I feel infinitely blessed that I was able to get here. That I was able to make the choices I have made. I decided to choose my life by facing my fears.”
So it was that with these life changing thoughts that Verna made her way back out of the cave, by her own admission irrevocably changed by her experience and looking forward to the rest of the life she'd been forced to focus on so clearly.
N uno’s Red Sea record - the mission I missed
Saturday 10th July 2004, I was on my way to Nuno’s house to pick up the team and take them to Johannesburg International Airport. Thinking to myself that someone really did not want me to go to Egypt this year. After the DCI incident I couldn’t dive for six months, so although I was part of the team, there’ was no point in going along to the diving mecca of Dahab, in the Red Sea.
I have to admit that this chapter is somewhat self-indulgent. I found myself feeling rather frustrated and in a very reflective mood, as any diver would. To have an opportunity to dive in the Red Sea, as well as be part of yet another world record dive, and not be able to go! Of course I’d known for months that the guys were going. But, I have to say, when the day actually arrived to go after so many months of planning and struggling for sponsorship I felt a little conflicted.
At the same time as wishing them all the best in their quest to once again hold the record for the deepest scuba dive ever, I was a little envious. I almost felt like I was letting my friend and mentor down in some way, although I knew he didn’t feel that way; he’d gone so far as to tell me that I was still a member of the team and would be on other upcoming expeditions. Still I wonder why the God I believe in decided I should not go along.
When I saw some of the gear the guys got sponsored for that trip I found myself in a moment of self-pity, thinking that ‘Murphy’ must be a relative or something. It was almost unfair, the way I’ve spent such a great deal of time and money over the years (none of which I had regretted for a moment). I wondered if it had all been worth it. I thought long and hard about my motivation for doing this type of diving. I’d always believed I did it to help my friends reach their chosen goals. Never for any personal gain, other than to be a part of the experience of exploration. I’m happy to say, it was a very brief ‘moment’ and I still do believe that my motives are clearly to assist some of the best divers I know achieve some extra-ordinary things.
Although we never really received any money for these trips we managed to get most of our expenses covered (it must be said, mostly due to Nuno’s efforts) and so had the opportunity to do more cave and Trimix diving than we could ever afford as students, opportunities like these come a along very seldom and once the bug has bitten it’s hard to turn down an invite, even harder to have to watch an expedition departing knowing you could have been with the team. Now I’d have to wait at home not knowing what was happening until the team had time to e-mail the rest of us. Oh well, people say I have a lot of patience. To give you an idea of the kind of diving I missed, here is an extract from the dispatches Gareth Lowndes sent back via e-mail;
“The reef just outside the Hotel door offers the adventurous diver pristine conditions to well over 100 metres. We know the area well. Once a diver exceeds twenty metres the fish life decreases but the soft coral formations are truly impressive. In the sport diving region (< 30 metres) these tend to be battered. On Monday we located a two meter soft coral tree wafting in the current at 59 metres. Further along the reef an enormous three meter sea fan sieves the water of tiny plankton. Higher in the reef, on the ascent, we witnessed a turtle demolishing a similar soft coral. The turtle was not subtle. He was ripping off large branches and crunching the soft material to a pulp. No doubt the sport divers will be held responsible.
On Tuesday night the team were invited to Sharm El Shaik to meet the crew of the DAN accredited recompression chamber. The jovial Dr Adal and his colleagues manage the chamber very efficiently. They have vast experience.
While we were there the phone reported two incidents; one from the Ras Mohammed marine park and another from the Tiran Straits. The centre treats up to 120 cases of DCI per annum [Pretoria, SA dealt with seven in the same span]. Built adjacent to the harbour this busy operation attracts many International doctors who are trained within the facility. Later that night, we were entertained on board a ship that anchored just outside Sharm Harbour. The chamber crew spoke good English and we chatted about the dive profile while dining over a good seafood buffet. The chamber crew wished us well and we all hoped we would not meet again ...
On Sunday Pieter and I did a wall dive on the ocean-side of the famous Dahab Blue Hole. Bottom time was fifteen minutes with a Trimix swap at 50 metres. Even at 80 metres the reef wall plummeted down out of sight. We estimated the visibility was 70 metres. I watched Pieter suspended under the colossal arch with 80 metres of sea water above him and an infinity of indigo behind him. It is the marine world equivalent of Notre Dame. The only sign he was in water was the occasional plume of exhaust gas from his regulator. We turned under the arch and started the ascent. The VR3 computer indicated deep decompression stops at 52 metres. Not a problem. We watched as a shoal of masked butterfly fish drifted by. Lighter and lighter. Every inch of the reef surface was now hotly contested real estate. At six metres we sucked on the oxygen cylinders slung under the BC's. Oxygen cuts decompression time, but we rarely leave the water when the computers are clear. There is too much life to watch.”
The dispatches kept coming back on an almost weekly basis with news that the expedition was going well. Until the actual record attempt that is. On this dive Nuno would be using one of the most advanced regulators available at the time. He was after-all attempting to dive deeper than any scuba diver ever had, in the process taking the regulator where no one else had ever dared. As Nuno told it to me, he began his descent well and progressed down the shot line to over 250 metres.
As a sky diver depends on his parachute, so the deep diver depends on his regulators. At more than 250 metres below the sea, Nuno’s parachute failed. Nuno felt his regulator begin to vibrate. The vibrations got worst with every breath, until he could barely keep the regulator in his mouth. He was in serious danger. Any error in judgment at this depth would be fatal.
Oblivious to the drama unfolding below them, the team waited on the surface. Support divers preparing to meet Nuno focused on their tasks, the skipper held the boat in place, everything was on track. If Nuno did not make the correct decision now they would not know for more than forty minutes. Even if they could do anything, it would be far too late by then.
Fortunately Nuno’s years of experience now came smoothly into play. He in fact had very little choice. He had to discard the faulty regulator, pick up his trusty back-up and terminate his dive immediately. His depth was an incredible 271 metres. Although short of his target it was a new Red Sea record for scuba diving. Ahead of him was twelve long hours of decompression in which to contemplate his narrow escape.
After hearing Nuno describe the sensation of having his primary regulator vibrating so badly that he could no longer breathe from it, having to go over to his backup system to get himself back to the rest of his stage cylinders and support divers, I realised how lucky we were to have our friend come back to us at all. Which is, for the rest of the team, the most important thing after all.
Knowing Nuno as I did I knew he would not give up. He would want to go back to the Red S
ea. I just hoped I could be part of that team. But only time and tide, as they say, would tell. I remember thinking, somewhat stoically, that even if I was unable to go through my incident or something else, I’d still have incredible dives to remember. How
could I measure the value of the unique diving experiences I’d had till then? No one who was not there can ever really appreciate the friendships I’d built or the challenges we’d faced as a team.
To quote the Police Sign halfway into Wondergat again;
“You have never lived, until you’ve almost died,
and for those who fight for it, life has a flavour the protected will never know”
Over the months I couldn’t dive, I found that faith can be a very confusing thing. At once a great comfort, and a great frustration. I only knew I was determined to dive again, and support Verna and Nuno to achieve their objectives to become the deepest scuba divers ever.
Nuno and support diver Pieter Venter Decompress in the Red Sea (Courtesy of Theo van Eeden, 2004)
Diving again
Exactly six months after my decompression incident I was back in hospital. I wanted to be very sure to consult all three doctors who had played a role in my PFO surgery and the added complication of the oedema. I was particularly concerned that I might not yet be fit enough to pass the lung function test which proves that one can move enough air in and out of one's lungs in one second. Finally, after months of Warfaren treatment and slow but steady improvements in my fitness, I went to see Dr Ballhausen again. Considering that when she first saw me I could hardly move the needle on the machine without wincing in pain, she was delighted when I passed a lung function test with flying colours. I managed to reach 108% lung function. Basically my lung function was better than an average person’s. So after a long road my lungs were working well again. In addition to this I had one last x-ray to get. Fortunately for me the x-ray showed no evidence of any scar tissue. Any scar tissue on the lung would probably have meant I could not dive again. My diving physician Dr. Frans Cronje' gave me the once over from a diving point of view and I was set to dive again.
Into The Deepest And Darkest Page 10
