It's all Bobs fault, pow wow and "The Squeeze"

Scuba, such a lovely sport, one I have come to love even though I only now have 8 dives under my weight belt. I had been looking forward to Saturday all week long, and finally it had arrived. I had already rented my tanks the day before, and picked up my brand spanking new BCD (what a beautiful piece of gear sigh) and so the only thing we had to do was head to Dripping Springs to Chris and Melissa's house. Were there just in time for a fresh pot of coffee and Chris even baked breakfest. We were due to meet Bill at Hamilton pool at 9 am , so we leave on time despite slow poke men (haha) and as we drive we see the sign notifying us that the pool was closed , we decide to drive the 5 miles to see for ourselves.

The whole time I am just hoping that the parks dept just did not change the sign. We arrive to the closed gate and see the park ranger riding his bike to open the doors. Due to the half inch rain the pool is in fact closed pending test results. Bill states that we are there to scuba, so can we dive since we do not plan to put the water in our mouth? Of course not says Mister Ranger, you cannot guarentee that you wont. Hey it was worth a shot. We continue to grill about when it will open and such and joking I stated "Im blogging this, its all your fault" and he tells me I dont know his name as he covers his name tag, so I say "It's all your fault and Im naming you Bob". Honestly the ranger was very nice and we enjoyed our little banter.

We decide to pow wow back at the house and decide where to go to next. I had just spent 50 bucks on rental gear and tanks, I MUST dive. We decide to head to Mansfield Dam, hey new site, Im game. Once there the nerves set in. This is un-planned and anyone who knows me knows that I am to organized to accept a change of plans without feeling a bit choatic but I try to hide the nerves as I gear up. One thing I am happy about is when setting up I did not have to "think" about it, I just knew what went where without the mental checklist. Granted I still went through the checklist after gearing up just to make sure. Melissa is very observant and knew I was nervous, it is nice to recieve the encouragement from a much more skilled diver who is able to pick up on symptoms of nervousness and stress. It is a new site, so its normal. Bill somehow is super SCUBA because he was geared up and ready to go in 3.4 seconds flat so once I was ready I went out to the water.

This was my first time with such a large group, 5 in total. I had 26 pounds of weight but once in the water I realized I must be getting a bit better with breathing because I was literally a rock. I ended up using 14 pounds and I feel I can go down to 10 pounds easy. Granted I was in a proper fitting wetsuit and it was 5 mil instead of 7. The plan was to surface swim to the white buoy and then follow the rope down to the wrecks. The algea was in bloom and vis was not nearly as good as it was last time I was on lake travis, this created some drama in my head, while on the surface I was convinced that I was being nibbled at and touched by fish. Thank goodness for the mask.

Chris was being all cool like and testing his new mask, however that new mask had him using air the whole time it was on, I dont remember its name, but I do know he had no one else to talk to NEENER NEENER NEENER. Nathan was taking forever and 2 days to get geared up so I had plenty of time to acclimate to the water temp and get to the buoy. Bill Chris and I just sat around and bullshitted while waiting and it was comforting and I was getting really excited to see the wrecks.

Once everyone was at the spot we would decend at I went into diver mode, my nerves were relaxed a bit and I was confident it would be a great dive. Bill was leading, so I kept my eyes on him during my decent. Although I did often check the others , Chris was on my right, but Melissa and Nathan were slightly above. Nathan gets "stuck" at about 10 feet , we were now two smaller groups, but per the plan we were to meet up at the platform , so me Chris and Bill continued down. I cleared properly and often enough, and had no issue with my ears. Once we hit 20 feet the bloom cleared up and we had what I would guesstimate borderline 20 ft visibilty. There were not as many fish here as Windy Point but there was still some living eye candy at the platform. We werent there very long before Nathan and Melissa showed up.

Bill pointed out the rope and we were off, one thing I remember is I felt uncomfortable holding on the rope, it is nice to have that guide but I felt constricted and almost grounded ha ha. Afterwards I found out I did not HAVE to stay on the rope, that it was there to guide me DUH. Sorry folks I take the dive plan literally. The last enjoyable experience on the dive was the spider boat. The boat is a cruiser type vessal and was protected by SpongeBob" and a honkin huge spider. I very much wanted to enter the cabin but knew it was not acceptable as I am unaware of added dangers entering a wreck could lead to.

As I was going over and around the cruiser I ascended approx 5 feet, once we were all back together after viewing the boat we started to take off again, that take off included going back down 5' to reach our depth of 58'. It was that precise moment, starting that decent that I felt and heard a pop. This pop was followed by pain in my left ear , extreme pain at that. I signaled that I needed to go up a bit and me and Melissa went up a few feet. I tried clearing, and thought I had but I was a bit out of it and signaled I was okay to try again. Boy was I wrong, as I started to decend again I felt a sudden and sharp pain behind my left eye and in my head I was hearing all these odd sounds that were not present in previous dives. The pain was so severe in my eye that I signaled I needed to surface. I let Melissa know my ear and eye were bad and we started up, the pain was so severe that I felt my eye was literally going to come out of the socket. All I could think about was the pain and that I had to ascend slowly. I was obsessive with watching my gauge, almost panic like in the fact I was barely doing anything but watching the gauge. I knew I needed to still make my decompression stop since I had 1500 psi of air, and to avoid any additional damage. When I would spend to much time staring at the gauge Melissa would tap the gauge and point at her eyes and up. I was aware she was helping me to avoid tunnel vision as well as helping me remain aware of my surroundings. I have a high threshold for pain, Ive been on chemo and Ive had kids, yet I was crying into my mask from this pain. I rarely cry and never in front of others as I see it as weakness. Yet I openly cried in front of Melissa during this time. (disclaimer- others crying is not them showing weakness, this is my feelings on me crying so all you crybabies out there no negative feedback on that comment haha ) At approx 15 to 20 feet I stop, and start the decompression, since I was not diving the computer and did not have a watch I signaled for Melissa to time. That was the longest 3 minutes of my life. All I could think about was the pain, which had not recieved relief in the 40 ft ascent.

I will never, EVER dive without my own watch or computer, I felt incredibly burdoned by relying on another to time our decompression. It was not a trust issue, as I trust all Ive dived with, it was a control issue, I did not have control over how long I had to wait, I had no refrence to the time as I was busy with the pain and found myself annoyed by the amount of times I kept asking if we could go up. Although the pain was still there once I was clear from my wait, my training stepped in, I looked up on my ascent and although I was being held by Melissa the whole way still maintained some form of control in getting to the surface, that is until I broke through. The need to hold my eye in place (no it was not actually out ) was so strong I just threw my mask and snorkal off. Thank god Bill was following, and decided "Thats not good" as he watched a mask and snokel fall below. He just saved me about 90 bucks THANKS BILL!

All in all it was actually a good dive, in retrospect I did kick ass in maintaining my thought process and never once lost the regulator while under water, nor did I make a bee line for the surface. I followed procedure as much as I could remember, and maybe exactly as I was told once the emergancy took place. I also was able to see Melissa respond in a rescue, and because of her skill and composure the rescue was never a rescue. Had she not been there I may have gotten tunnel vision, I may not have decompressed the right amount of time, and I may very well have screwed up more. She was exceptional in her way of handling the situation and she should definitly feel pride for her ability to react and handle a buddy having an emergancy. For myself I have wondered how I would handle a situation that places my life in danger in the water, and at times was scared that I would not handle it properly, but now I know otherwise...Dive 8 , yuppers I got "The Squeeze" in the sinus and the ear and I lived. I more so then ever appreciate the training I recieved from Nik, and feel my ability to surface safely is a combination of his training of me and Melissa's training.

The downside of the incident was my inability to stop thinking about it. The rest of the day was spent at Melissa and Chris's house for a bonfire and weenie roast and all I could do was jello shot the pain away and constently think about my actions and anyone who listened was told the "No shit there I was.." story in the hopes that they could give me reasons why it happened. After research I realize it was the action around the boat the ascent and then decent of 5 feet. I was not aware enough of my allergies and did not realize that I should not have even dived in the first place. Today the ear is better, and well the sinus headache is still there but I am okay and in the future the lessons of this dive will always be at the forethought of my mind.