As I sat next to my student’s hospital bed, watching her go in and out of sleep, I couldn’t help but notice all the local Malay people visiting their sick friends and relatives. Instead of being preoccupied with their own little world of their ill or injured person’s sickbed, they were all staring at me in my wetsuit, hair windblown into an Einstein ‘fro from the speedboat ride and no shoes. The no shoes seemed to amuse the nurses greatly.
Accidents happen so fast. There is a psychology to the onset of a panic and I suppose sometimes you can prevent it, but there was no slow motion to this one. One minute we were in 5 meters of water doing skills. And in a split second (well 20 to be precise), Janet’s eyes went wide as flying saucers, mask came off and regulator got spit out and she started to claw her way to the surface. I held onto her the whole time trying to put the regulator back in her mouth, but she kept spitting it right back out. And with no bubbles coming out of her to indicate that she was exhaling, I was freaking that she would over-expand her lungs. It probably saved her from more serious injury that she did take a breath while under there.
At the surface, she was responsive in that she was coughing and expelling water – and so much water came out of her in the half hour that followed. Otherwise, she was completely non-responsive. Thankfully since we’d just gone down, the boat was right there to pick us up and there were still a few divers at the surface who were also able to help me. I stripped her weights and gear and with the help of the boat captain and one of Ryan’s newly certified Rescue students, I carried her up the ladder. (I had told Ryan’s students the previous day that I would show them how to exit someone up a ladder. That’s not exactly what I’d meant.) The staff was a little slow in some of their reactions, but I was screaming that we had to go. I left my own gear in the water and asked the Rescue student to take care of it, pressed the captain to step on it and we went flying back towards Semporna.
I kept Janet in the recovery position on the boat as she kept coughing and expelling more water and vomiting water. I monitored her breathing, praying to random deities that I wouldn’t have to start CPR. I was also concerned because her breathing was very labored and I was worried about confusing agonal breaths with normal breathing. A few minutes before we reached Semporna she started becoming more alert and started to talk to me. I reassured her. I asked her if her chest and lungs hurt. She said it was a bit hard to take a breath, but it didn’t hurt. I took that and all the water that had poured out of her as hopeful signs that she might not have over-expanded.
On shore, the Singamata truck was ready waiting to take us to the hospital. We were at the hospital within minutes.
In my opinion, the hospital was a bit slow to react. I wasn’t feeling a sense of urgency. No one asked me what had happened. I forced the information and my choice of diagnosis on them to try to light a bit of a fire under them. They x-rayed her chest and confirmed near-drowning and no lung-overexpansion. At that moment, I felt so relieved. And then I acted as intermediary, making sure that they didn’t touch her or do anything without first explaining what they were doing.
When we first arrived at the hospital the staff was making noise like she could just go home and I was ready to full on argue with them that if she’d had a near-drowning there was no way she was leaving the hospital without first being properly monitored. We don’t learn a lot about near-drowning in our EFR courses, but I do remember that much. Especially since Janet wanted to leave and would probably have been happy if they’d told her she could go, I knew I was going to have to be mean cop on this subject. Thankfully as soon as they took the xray and saw that there was still water in her lungs, they treated the situation with a bit more urgency, got a proper doctor and got her going on oxygen and an IV with antibiotics.
Looking back on the day, I’m first of all so grateful that Janet will be just fine. She checked out this morning and proceeded on with her trip. I’m also grateful that I was able to do what needed to be done in a cool, calm and collected manner. I know that staying calm helped her tremendously because she told me so. Huge improvement over the last time I faced a crisis situation and completely came unhinged. Of course, as Ryan pointed out, it’s very different. Lisa was in a coma with little chance of survival. Janet never even lost consciousness.
Today my body is screaming at me from the efforts made getting her unto the boat. And I am a bit emotionally hung-over from the adrenaline rush. I have found myself lost in thought a few times and caught myself going to those dark places of “what ifs.” What if I had let her go to the surface? She probably wouldn’t have drowned. But then she probably would have had a lung over expansion injury. You can play that game for ages and get absolutely nowhere.
And so I have to file another incident report with PADI.
I think about instructors I’ve seen who think that it’s okay to be 1 or 2 meters away from your students as you’re watching them do skills. From that vantage point, they could not have responded, the student would have been at the surface before the neurons even fired that there was a problem. I insist with my divemaster trainees that they have to have their hands on the students at all times while a student is doing skills. And I know they think that I’m being ridiculous. But boys, I tell you, this is why!
A few weeks ago, we had another traumatic experience. There’s a lot of “fuck yous” to the environment around here. As I’ve already mentioned, pollution is a monumental problem and the dynamite fishing is out of control. I can’t do a dive without hearing bombs go off. About two weeks ago, I was on the boat doing island dives with an open water student and I was last to come up from the last dive of the day. In fact, we came up because Jose free-dived down to tell me to come up. He gave me the sign of a turtle and then made a gesture with his hands that looked like a sign for explosion. We surfaced and he explained that they had a turtle on the boat who had been hit by a speed boat and its head was exploded. Indeed, you could see its brains. But it was still alive. It was a national holiday of some sort, so we weren’t able to get any kind of support from the marine protection people. Shameful! The turtle ended back up at the resort. And Ryan took care of it. He took it back into the sea. I don’t know what he did with it and I don’t know if we’ll ever talk about it. For now I still get teary thinking about it – I can’t talk about it. All I can say is that in 4 years, it was the first time that I ever saw my boy in tears. Humans being stupid towards humans is one thing. But we get so angry and emotional when human stupidity hurts the creatures we covet. That turtle was going on about her happy turtle business, coming up to the surface for air. And some idiot motoring too fast and much too close to the reef and not being careful caused this. Humans suck in general. And in this part of the world, they suck even more when it comes to their attitudes to the marine environment.
For the number of adventures we’ve had, I have to say that I’m enjoying our time at Singamata tremendously. I’ve started getting into a rhythm for conducting my courses where it’s flowing like an oiled (albeit sometimes a tiny bit sticky) machine. The diving is lovely. Also, where Vicky originally said she probably only needed one of us, it’s proven that both of us are quite useful and being kept quite busy. So we’re rolling in fat wads of dough. Not really, but we’ll be able to pay for our exit ticket outta here when it’s time to go.
There are some kinks. There are essential materials that we need that are slow to come though the appearance of new BCDs that I’d asked for gave me hope that the other stuff we’ve been promised is coming as well. The manager, Vicky, is very blunt and set in her ways, but she’s also thus far given me the impression of being fair and they are aspiring to upgrading the resort to a PADI 5 Star IDC center which gives me a bit of confidence that they are interested in fixing the safety issues that we’ve presented to them.
Jose left on Ryan’s birthday. I accompanied him to Semporna so that I could buy Ryan some birthday treats – ginger snaps, chocolate and candy. We are living in an area destitute of proper shopping, so not even a funny t-shirt. He did much better for my birthday than I was able to do for his.
We miss Jose. He’d helped me out with the last few courses I’d had and I have to say that the lack of his presence was profoundly noticed yesterday. He would have been very handy to have around to turn to in order to keep things organized at sea while I sped off to land.
And Ryan misses being called “Chico de California.”
We are left with the kid couple of divemasters from Sweden who are one disaster after another. They are young and we can attribute a lot of the immaturity and lack of oral filtration system to that. But I’m ready to smack one of them. Whoever trained them for their divemaster forgot to go over the professionalism chapter with them. But worst yet, whoever did their divemaster signed them off on professionalism.
We’ve had a special bunch of customers these past 10 days. Lots of Ozzies and Europeans – lovely, lovely people. With their help, I’ve started a fund to help certify some of the local staff. There is a young boy who is the snorkeling guide and an amazing one at that who wants to be a divemaster. I am going to train him and I am going to keep collecting funds to pay for his certifications.
I don’t know why it surprises me that we meet so many like-minded people. We are all in very similar boats, if not the exact same boat. All of us are travelers, exploring new lands, new cultures, different ways of living. We meet a lot of people who are not just on a two-week holiday from the 9 to 5 grind, but on longer trips. It’s easy to get lost in this life. If you can work to keep going one year easily turns into two and on and on.
I could have used a day off, but we’re busy on the floating resort. Today I started an Advanced Class with a Malay woman who is from Kuala Lumpur but lives in Singapore. I feel like we get even more cultural diversity here than we did on PP.
Love and Peace to all. xoxoxoxo
