Page 62 - AlertDiver_Winter2013
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The Lessons
I am happy I was experienced enough to understand the
potential ramifications of this incident and confident enough
to initiate emergency procedures even before any symptoms
appeared. I was lucky the young diver could breathe on his
own, and I was stupid not ever to have taken a course in
oxygen delivery. It is foolish to depend on someone else for
this. What if the instructor forgot everything or had been
the injured diver? Or what if this had been my friend who
dives with me five weeks a year without any instructors on
board? And even after all these realizations, several weeks
later I still had not taken an oxygen-delivery course. I was
always busy — and dumb.
The Solution
DAN came to the rescue. DAN staff came to Cayman and
conducted a presentation about dive safety. I have been
a member of DAN for ages, and I attended an excellent
talk by Dan Orr. I was ecstatic when I was offered the
opportunity to take an oxygen course right in my own
photo center with all my instructors. During the course I
was amazed at how much I did
not know and how important
it is to practice using the
system. I will repeat that:
You must practice using the
system
. As I write this, I am
mentally reviewing what we
learned, and I realize I’ve already started to forget
some of the specifics from many months ago. But I
now know exactly what to do: I had better get my
classmates from the oxygen course together again for a
quick refresher.
Can all of you who spend time in dive settings operate
an oxygen-delivery system correctly? Everyone should be
able to, since you never know when the trained person will
be the victim. Don’t depend on others to take care of you
and your buddy — sign up for a class; it’s simple. Like most
things, administering oxygen is easy once someone shows
you how. Had my student’s son not been placed on oxygen
so quickly, I hate to think how that incident might have
turned out.
AD
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WINTER 2013
RESEARCH, EDUCATION & MEDICINE
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