The Last Dive

by Bernie Chowdhury

  Once they got word that I was recovering, my friends aboard the Seeker chose to dive as scheduled the next day, on another, shallower wreck. Rather than think too hard about the risks involved, which might serve only to make them give up the sport and camaraderie they loved so much, it was better to jump right back into the water. I probably would have done the same.

  When I awoke in the hospital the morning after my recompression chamber treatment, I needed to go to the bathroom. I swung my feet over the bed and stood up. Suddenly, the room spun and I had to hold on to the side of the bed to stay standing. I closed my eyes and shook my head, hoping to clear my focus. When I opened my eyes everything was still spinning, which made me feel nauseated. I groaned. What was happening? I tried to take a step and completely lost my balance. I fell into the side of the other bed in the room, and then I collapsed onto my knees, holding on to the side of the bed so that I would not tumble over completely. I could not walk. I was overcome with terror. Was I going to be a cripple for good? What had I done when I ascended without decompressing? I’d thought everything would be fine once I got into the recompression chamber. But now, reality threatened to flatten me.

  Although my hearing had returned, the nitrogen bubbles had damaged my brain in such a way that my balance was skewed, and this affected my vision when I did try to walk. It was as if I had consumed too much alcohol. I swung my torso toward my bed, leaned over, and grabbed the railing with my hands. I pulled myself over to my bed, and then heaved myself up and flopped back onto the mattress. The exertion made me sweat heavily, and now my stomach heaved as if I were going to throw up. Then, I remembered the conversation with the doctor toward the end of my chamber treatment. He had said that I would walk away from the accident. Did he misdiagnose the extent of my recovery?

  I lay in my bed, frozen at the thought of being crippled for life. Then a young man with dark, Mediterranean features and a stocky build similar to my own entered my room and introduced himself. Dr. Ignaccio Mendagurin, who was foreign born, explained that as a neurologist and a former navy diver, he was interested in my case both professionally and personally. I liked his calm, smooth tone of voice, which sounded nonjudgmental. And I very much liked the fact that he was a diver, just like me—or just as I had been until yesterday.

  As Dr. Mendagurin talked, he reminded me of my father, a scientist who held a doctorate in materials science and a master’s in chemistry and who spoke English with a clear, crisp diction that underscored his British education. My father, who was born in India, spoke several languages, including German, my mother’s native tongue. Though my father had a darker complexion and a thicker, fuller thatch of tar-black hair than Dr. Mendagurin, the two seemed alike in many ways. I felt that Dr. Mendagurin would be far more empathic than the doctor who had treated me in the chamber, the man who had told me in such an amazed tone that I would walk away from my accident, as if to say that fools like me should rightfully be crippled permanently.

  Dr. Mendagurin told me that my being deaf in both ears from decompression sickness—inner-ear hits, as they were called—was a malady from which nobody had fully recovered. He was impressed that I had regained hearing in both of my ears during my first treatment. It seemed to him that I was a medical anomaly. Could he attend to me so that he could witness and document my progress? Although I was frightened that I might have suffered permanent damage from my accident, I was glad that something useful might come of it after all, and I welcomed Dr. Mendagurin’s expertise.

  The doctor seemed to have a genuine scientific curiosity about my case, the same sort of curiosity that I had seen my father display. I had greatly admired my father’s determination to arrive at a formula for the efficient cultivation of penicillin, which was produced as a result of fermentation of a broth in which a specific bacterium produced the precursor of penicillin under optimum laboratory conditions. When I was eleven, I saw him work on this problem night and day for six months. He always carried a pad and pen with him, and incessantly wrote pages of chemical formulae, even at the dinner table, until he was successful. My father’s methodology is probably still used by Bristol-Myers in penicillin production. My admiration for my father was further increased because when I was eight, I had seen the results of a chemical accident at my father’s lab, and was frightened by the bandages he wore from the chemical burns he suffered on his arms, hands, and face. My father was undaunted by the accident, and he told me that if everyone gave up at the first obstacle, nothing would ever have been accomplished. Much as Chrissy Rouse remembered his own father’s accident, I carried this memory with me and knew it influenced my motivations on land and under the sea.

  Now, I hoped that my hunch about Dr. Mendagurin was right, and that he would show the same sort of determination I had seen my father display. “Doctor, I’m happy that I can hear again, but now I’m worried that I might never be able to walk again,” I said, lying perfectly still in my bed to prevent the world from spinning.

  “Listen to me carefully,” the doctor said, his tone earnest but compassionate. “You’ll be able to walk again, but it’s going to take time and effort. Your brain will have to train itself to use a new neural pathway to send the required signals to your body to walk.”

  I perked up. “Wow, that’s cool! What do I need to do? And how long will it take?”

  “You have to force yourself to walk, starting today.”

  “But everything spins around, and I have trouble standing. And the whole thing makes me feel like throwing up,” I said and groaned.

  “Yes, you’re going to have to overcome that. You’ll do it a little at a time. But you have to do it if you want to walk again. You’ll make progress in small steps, and it will take time. You’ve got to be strong!”

  Dr. Mendagurin examined me for his records and then left. I was alone, faced with the trip to the bathroom, only about fifteen steps away from my bed, but it might as well have been on top of Mount Everest. Determined to follow the doctor’s advice, I got out of bed, and banged into the side of it, holding on. The effort was already intense. My heart rate and breathing rate increased. I started to sweat. I could not lie down again this time because I urgently needed the bathroom. I took another step and reeled to the end of the bed and grabbed the railing. Objects were now spinning faster and my stomach churned. I lunged forward and then held on to the dresser drawer like a shipwrecked sailor in stormy seas grasping ahold of driftwood. I let go of the drawer and bounced along the wall toward the bathroom door. The spinning room made my steps feel surreal, as if I were floating. I grabbed the door frame to steady myself and catch my breath. My skin was now slick from sweat, which made the room feel cold. I careened toward the toilet and felt like an airman abandoning a spinning, plummeting airplane. I sat down and thanked God.

  After a very long time, I gathered the strength and will to make my way back from the bathroom to my bed, and I retraced my stumbling steps. When I got to the bed, I fell into it, panting and sweating with the effort. I was exhausted. All I could do was sleep to regain my energy. Before I dropped off to sleep, I thought about Dr. Mendagurin describing what my brain could accomplish. I hoped that while I slept my brain would be working on the neural pathway I needed to walk normally again.

  The next day after once again navigating the linoleum like a drunken sailor, I underwent a second chamber treatment, although Dr. Mendagurin told me that he was doubtful that another recompression would improve my condition any further. For him, time and continued efforts to walk were the most critical to my full recovery. I still had tinnitus, ringing in the ears, but Dr. Mendagurin thought that this would also resolve itself in time. And he was happy with my progress over the past day, during which I had forced myself to try to walk several times.

  During my recovery at the hospital, I had plenty of time to contemplate my accident. How had I gotten into such trouble that it had nearly cost my life? Why did I dive when I was feeling so bad? In the past, I had respected both the deep and myself, and I h
ad not dived when I did not feel well; even when I had been very physically fit, I had not dived if my intuition nagged at me and a dive did not feel right. Once, on the Andrea Doria, I decided not to dive one day even though I was physically feeling fine, and the weather was great. That day, the competitiveness for artifacts seemed misplaced and the risk to my life did not seem worth it. Gary Gentile was surprised. Perhaps that was because I had more respect for the Andrea Doria. The Northern Pacific lay much shallower. Yet I had the nagging suspicion that the reasons for my current trauma had to go deeper. Even though I’d pushed too hard and dived when I should not have, I still could—and should—have gotten myself safely to the surface without missing decompression. I knew that underwater problems had to be solved underwater. It was something I drilled into my students, especially the ones who had a tendency to look for the surface as a refuge when they had problems. I knew that there were underlying reasons for my accident that went far beyond what standard accident analysis could reveal.

  I was no stranger to an explanation of the causes of accidents like mine. I had worked in my spare time in affiliation with the National Underwater Accident Data Center (NUADC) at the University of Rhode Island to conduct a wreck-diving accident analysis of all fatalities involving U.S. amateur divers. After I had taken my cave-diving training in the late eighties and had seen what Sheck Exley had done for the sport of cave diving, I wondered why no such analysis had been conducted specifically for wreck-diving accidents. In December 1990, when I took Exley’s mixed-gas cave-diving course, I talked to him about my ideas for an analysis of wreck-diving fatalities modeled on his cave-diving study. Exley was very helpful and offered suggestions to make my task easier, which I appreciated. He worked in a spirit of cooperation, believing that whatever we learned and shared would benefit the sport overall. Exley’s approach was far removed from the infighting among wreck divers and wreck-diving boat captains I had both heard about and witnessed. The analysis I conducted was published with the NUADC’s yearly report. At its core was a breakdown of the major causes of wreck-diving fatalities into two groups, one involving exploration outside of a wreck, the other involving penetrations, and gave suggestions for divers to avoid becoming a statistic, just as Exley’s cave-diving report had done.

  After parts of my analysis were quoted in an article that appeared in a U.S. national diving newspaper, Underwater U.S.A., Chris Rouse called me one day. “Hey, man, you’re famous.” I had no idea what he was talking about, and he seemed surprised because the article’s direct quotes made it seem to him that the reporter had called and interviewed me. No, I assured him, they had just taken the published information and quoted me from that. Even then, he was impressed at the recognition that I had gotten. “Well, at least people know your name,” he said. “I’m just another nobody.”

  As I lay in my hospital bed, Chris’s comment echoed in my head and stirred a disturbing thought: Was my accident the result of my urge for recognition? After a great year of diving, including artifact collecting on the Andrea Doria, had I still needed to prove beyond a doubt that I was an outstanding diver by recovering a brass porthole, the symbol in my mind of a diving top gun? Did my urge to be somebody seduce me into disaster, or was it just in my nature to pursue things as intensely as possible? But wasn’t it just human nature to push things as far as possible to reveal the unknown in our world and ourselves? Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama had done that in their lives as they used different approaches to explore the ocean route from Europe to India. People had pushed the envelope throughout history to come up with more efficient ways to explore underwater. Sheck Exley had pushed himself to advance the cave-diving frontier. My father had relentlessly pursued his scientific research in spite of setbacks.

  Diana, my wife, appeared in the doorway, looking drawn and scared. She had been escorted to the hospital by Kevin O’Brien, a student who had taken several courses with me, and my frequent diving companion; he had been aboard the Seeker and witnessed my spiral into decompression sickness. I looked at Diana’s beautiful South American face, framed by long, wavy black hair, and I shuffled gratefully toward her in my hospital gown. She couldn’t take her eyes off my face, bloated from all of the intravenous fluids. Diana smiled from relief and happiness, and hugged me. I returned her hug, squeezing her tight. Diana had often resented my frequent absences to go diving, and I had minimized to her the risks involved, confident as I had been that I would come home safely. Now, having seen what the bends could do to me, not only could she be resentful about my absences, but she had fresh and plentiful reasons to worry that one day I might not come home at all.

  I looked sheepishly at my wife, embarrassed that I had gotten myself into this situation. “What did you tell Gil?”

  “I told him you got sick and had to go to the hospital, but that you would be all right and would be home soon.”

  What else could she have said to our three-year-old boy? “I’ll call Gil, and let him know I’m okay.”

  My wife nodded tightly. “That would be very good.”

  “I’m sorry” was all I could say to her.

  “I’m sorry too,” Diana said.

  I felt a little uncomfortable, not knowing what else to say. I turned to Kevin and asked about my diving equipment. Kevin’s face showed surprise, and then he chuckled. “You’re still recovering from your accident and you’re worried about your gear? Man, you’re hard-core!” We both laughed. Diana didn’t.

  “Well, do I have any gear left, or did it get dumped in all the excitement?”

  “Someone brought your tanks on board. I packed all your stuff back into your bags and took everything to your apartment.”

  I was relieved. All of the expensive equipment had not wound up on the bottom of the ocean. I knew I would need my diving equipment again—no matter what that doctor told me.

  The second chamber treatment had not improved my hearing, and the tinnitus remained. Walking remained a struggle, but I forced myself to take the steps as Dr. Mendagurin had instructed. Now, after four days, I could walk without banging into anything, although my vision was severely skewed whenever I turned my head while I was shuffling along. It was like watching a video shot by someone walking with a handheld camera. In spite of my imperfect physical condition, I was relieved that I could walk down the hospital’s halls by myself, and that I could hear.

  When I was twelve, I had read Victory over Myself, the autobiography of Floyd Patterson. Boxing’s first two-time world heavyweight champion had been a very shy and withdrawn boy, and even though I was a very outgoing kid, I could relate to his sense of needing to overcome himself in order to achieve what he was capable of. Now, while I contemplated my situation in the hospital, I knew that I would need my own victory over myself if I was to come back and dive safely again. The words of another childhood hero, Muhammad Ali, served to motivate me and reinforced my desire to dive again in spite of the terrible setback I was now recovering from: After he lost his world championship to the underdog Leon Spinks, Ali simply smiled at his distraught handlers and said, “It’s all just a test.” In his next fight, Ali defeated Spinks and became the only man to win the world heavyweight boxing championship three times.

  I knew about tests in the boxing ring. My own amateur boxing career had mixed results, the most disappointing of which were my two unsuccessful attempts to win a Golden Gloves state boxing championship, first at age fourteen, and again when I was seventeen. I related to the battered boxer who fought alone and would not let defeat or a bruised body derail the ambition to win—even though that ambition might lead to brain damage.

  When I was about to be released from the hospital, after five days, Dr. Mendagurin stood over my bed. I looked at his face and realized it pained him to give me my discharge. “I know that giving up diving is something that is difficult if not impossible for someone who loves the water as much as you, but you need to consider that if you ever take another hit like this again, you’ll never walk again. You’ve use
d up your extra neural pathways. You won’t get another chance.”

  His words rang in my ears. If I was able to walk and hear so that I could go back and dive, I couldn’t screw up again. If I was going to dive and live, I had to know why deep water lured me like a siren.

  One person I knew could give me the facts and focus for my exploration. Dr. Jennifer Hunt had first called me a month before my accident. She explained that she was a psychoanalytically trained sociologist teaching at Montclair State University, in New Jersey, had a private psychoanalytic practice, and was interested in studying psychological and sociological issues in diving. As we talked, I was not clear about what exactly she wanted to study and thought that it had something to do with gender issues. I had the impression that she still needed to develop the questions her research would explore. I was skeptical, and not overly thrilled to participate in a study about gender issues in diving when I felt there were so many other, more pressing things to research in the diving world. I agreed to be interviewed and we set up an appointment for a later date. Then, I dived off the Seeker to the wreck of the Northern Pacific while experiencing flu symptoms. I did, however, see Dr. Hunt once I traveled from the Philadelphia hospital to my home in New York City.

  First I had to get home from the hospital. Steve Bielenda and Hank Garvin of the Wahoo, the dive boat I had chartered for the Team Doria expedition earlier in the year, had both called me during my hospital stay, and both were concerned. Although Hank and I disagreed about wreck-diving techniques and equipment configuration, we respected each other and I appreciated his offer to come down to Philadelphia from his home north of New York City, pick me up, and drive me home, since my wife did not drive. She was home, taking care of our son. I knew that Hank was sincere and if I really needed a ride he would make the trip, which would take him at least three hours each way. Steve Bielenda also offered me a ride, and for him the journey would take at least five hours from his home in eastern Long Island. Both Bielenda’s and Garvin’s offers touched me as acts of friendship, although during the Team Doria expedition I thought that they could have anchored us where the team wanted to be, and had felt shortchanged when they didn’t—perhaps because of their own desire to dive another part of the ocean liner. Even though we had our differences, we were all divers, bound by our intense passion for the sport to help one another, no matter what.