Maybe you could find yourself in a similar situation...
Glancing back at the sun sinking into the distant horizon, you and your dive buddy stand at the waters edge, reliving the fantastic shore dive you had just completed. As you begin to remove your hood and gloves, you notice other divers swimming towards the beach. In between frantic arm waving, you hear one of them calling for “Help”. He had been diving in a foursome and two of his dive buddies had a problem underwater and need some assistance. As you rush along the beach, still wearing some of your kit not having time to fully remove it, all you see is one of the divers struggling out of the water dragging another beside him. As you arrive, they are both now lying at the waters edge. One is unconscious and the other, very stressed and highly over exerted.
From your rescue and EFR training, you immediately assess the situation and consider the options. You quickly question one of the other divers and give him the task of phoning the emergency services and to inform the operator of the likely need for treatment of the two injured divers in a hyperbaric chamber - as you and your buddy get to work on the two patients. The conscious one has already mentioned to your buddy that he felt dizzy and had severe pain in his elbow and shoulder area. You immediately recognised his signs and symptoms as probable decompression illness - so you put your training into action. Your buddy begins by asking the fourth diver to assist by removing the patients dive equipment while you deal with the non-responsive patient. Dragging him fully out of the water you hear the conscious diver tell your buddy they both came up too quickly after the diver you are treating had a serious panic attack. Decompression illness was now highly likely.
Whilst you don’t have an oxygen emergency kit with you, fortunately, you and your dive buddy are owners of RescuEAN pods and both were diving that day on a 38% Nitrox mix - you immediately have the facility to offer instant and beneficial assistance to the injured divers.
Your buddy has already set his patient in the recovery position, connected his pod to his Nitrox filled cylinder and has the facemask in place. His patient is now calming down. You have checked your patient’s vital signs. Between rescue breaths through the facemask and administering CPR, you instruct the diver that has just returned confirming the paramedics were on their way, to set up your pod for use. On arrival at the scene, you had quickly removed your BCD and cylinder and laid it close to your patient. In a second or two, the diver had undone the low pressure hose connection from your BCD and connected it to your pod. Slipping the tubing onto the exit nozzle and briefly purging the pod, he connects the tubing to your facemask. The pod is now ready to use with the increased O2 mix from your Nitrox cylinder to benefit the unresponsive patient.
While continuing rescue breaths you hear from your buddy that the other patient is relatively stable for now, breathing well and calmly. He then sits the other two divers down and finding they were diving on 32% Nitrox, recommends they breathe through their regulators even though they had not surfaced overly quickly nor were showing any signs of distress. You are still positioned next to your injured diver as you twist the pod’s centre control and hear the airflow begin. You quickly ask for permission to administer emergency oxygen. Even though unconscious, you accept the patient will want you to help as you restart mouth to mouth and CPR – now with the benefit of 38% oxygen mix entering their lungs. Still assessing him for other less obvious injuries and finding none other than the possible decompression illness, you continue with CPR and rescue breaths.
Soon the EMS paramedics arrive on the scene, just as your patient begins to become conscious. As you allow the paramedics 100 percent oxygen to replace your pod, you are confident you did everything you could by delivering the highest concentration of emergency oxygen available to your non-responsive patient and as quickly as possible… You report to the paramedics the details of their dive, as you understand them, hand them both injured divers dive computers and advise that they have been they have been on 38% Nitrox for the past 14 minutes…
