October 22 - Thailand: Koh Tao
Medic/First Aid Course
Today was the first day of our 4-day Medic/First Aid and Rescue Diver course. We had breakfast in Ban's restaurant, and waited to be called to class. A little after 10:00, our instructor Flavios ("Flav") walked in and said "Anyone for the Rescue Diver course?". So we got up and followed him into a side building.
This l-shaped hut-area was much like the restaurant. Wooden floors, low tables with cushions for seats, and no walls. Another class was going in one of the ends of the L, and Flav lead us to the other end. Taking the class with us are two Italians from Switzerland - Alberto and Mirielle.
We are diving, by with way, with Ban's Dive School (http://www.bansdiving.com).
Annie! Annie! Are you OK?
Day #1 is Medic/First Aid, which is basically the same class Jon and I had to take every year to maintain our lifeguard certifications during college. Flav launched into the CPR methods, safety precautions, and first-aid lingo, and it brought back a lot of memories for me. We even had "Annie" the plastic half-body with expandable lungs and to whom we must say "Annie! Annie! Are you OK? I'm medically trained - I can help!".
Decompression Sickness
Flav also added a scuba twist to everything we learned. Although all of today's class was taught as if we were on land, the next 3 days of "Rescue Diver" will be scuba-related. So we spent part of the day discussing DCS and DCI - Decompression Sickness and Decompression Illness, and what First Aid should be given when either of the two is suspected. Basically, oxygen and fluids is the best treatment for either, until the diver can be taken to the nearest decompression chamber. In our case, the decompression chamber is on Ko Samui.
What I didn't know is that there are different levels of DCS and DCI. DCS is basically "the Bends", which is painful and difficult and can be deadly if not treated. But in most cases it can be helped. DCI includes DCS and also the more complicated lung over-expansion problems which often require hospital stays and sometimes surgery.
So as part of our discussion of the two, Flav mentioned that Decompression Sickness (The Bends) can sometimes be delayed for a number of hours, and can often be very mild. For some reason, this made me perk up. I asked about the different symptoms - from heavy to light. The worst cases are those people in extreme joint pain. Other people feel stiffness. And the lesser symptoms are what Flav said Dive Masters call "the Fuzzies". In this latter case, the person feels slightly off-center, dizzy, and exhausted.
At this point, Jon and I exchanged a very sly look with each other, and we each knew exactly what the other person was thinking.
If you happened to read our excerpts from The Red Sea, you may remember that I was under the weather after the Thistlegorm dive. (See July 24, July 25, July 26, and July 27). We thought it was heat exhaustion at the time. But my symptoms were exactly what Flav had described: Fuzziness, dizziness, exhaustion, overwhelming desire to sleep. And Jon says that I was experiencing numbness in my hands and feet, although I don't really remember that much. So we are now positive that I had DCS, which makes a lot of sense since we had been diving like crazy for 3 days. But - of course - we kept this to ourselves. This could put a little damper on our desire to work at dive shops in Australia, because it means that my body is a bit more sensitive than the PADI Dive Tables. But this is something that we'll have to watch out for in the next week of diving. God knows that I don't want a visit to the decompression chamber. That would be a very boring journal entry!
Afternoon Session
We broke for lunch, and Jon and I went back to the room for peanut-butter and jelly crackers. I know this seems boring to everyone, but this dive class ain't cheap and we need to save money.
After lunch, the four of us settled in to watch two First Aid videos. They were unbelievably boring and very 80s. The videos were made in the US, and were just as cheesy as can be. Did women really wear their hair that big in the 80s? Some of these 'doos were huge.
To help distract us from the videos, there were two little puppies running around the dive center. There are dogs all over this island, and many of them seem to hang out at Ban's Dive School. But these two little puppies were precious. What puppies aren't? So they at least offered us some sort of amusement in between the video segments on bleeding arteries and diabetic comas!
We spent the rest of the afternoon reading our books and chilling out. Dinner was on the deck of Ban's restaurant, where Jon and I watched the tide come in, played Gin Rummy, and sung along with the Counting Crows. It was a nice night, and the Pad Thai was very yummy.
We called it a night when the mosquitoes started dive-bombing down my shirt.