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Between the Cracks


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Some of you who've greeted me here, know a little about my story. A year ago, October 2, 2018 I was scuba diving in Alexandria Bay, NY. I only had 3 days left of a season spent teaching technical diving on the shipwrecks found in the St. Lawrence River. One more student, 4 more dives between 180 and 250 feet deep, and I'd be done. Not just with the season, but with deep diving -- forever. I had just turned 50 years old that July. Despite being in good shape where I could still pass a USLA ocean lifeguard test and being very muscular and lean, I just started to feel old. As we age, we are more susceptible to oxygen toxicity and decompression sickness. I was certified to teach a course called Level III Exploration Trimix to 330 feet/100 meters; the deepest certification agencies and insurance companies allow us to conduct diver training. After class, a student possesses the knowledge to go to extremes if they desired ... 500 feet ... deeper.

My plan was to semi-retire as a technical diving instructor. I was still going to teach scuba, but mostly within recreational diving depths to 130 feet and a course called Advanced Nitrox to 150 feet. But, only occasionally. My girlfriend, Sonya, and I were going to get married and do a lot of backpacking and horseback riding. Sonya grew up in a wealthy area of Los Angeles and had her own horse and enough land to trail ride. Being from Southern California her hobbies were snow skiing and figure skating. She eventually became a professional figure skating coach. I grew up in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania surrounded by ski resorts so my hobbies were scuba diving and surfing. My girlfriend's voice is newscaster neutral. I sound like the turtle, Crush, from finding Nemo. In high school, my homeroom teacher who had been a marine at Camp Pendleton, said I was the only native California not born in the state. We used to joke that God just goofed and sent the surfer and the skier to the wrong addresses.

Anyway, the day before I got decompression sickness (DCS), I taught a class in a wetsuit to on a wreck in 250 feet of water. The river water temperature was between 68 - 72 F all the way to the bottom in the summertime. When the crisp Fall nights come, the temperature can drop a degree a day until it reaches the 30's in winter. The water was getting chilly so I decided to dive in my drysuit. We wear a type of thermal underwear underneath a rubber suit with attached boots and gloves and a latex neck seal to keep water out. A special locking zipper allows entry. My suit had some holes in it, so I patched them the night before like you'd repair a swimming pool liner. I decided to test dive it for the class. Underwater, the visibility was excellent. I played around an the wreck of the Islander, an 1800's paddlewheeler in 25 - 60 feet of water. Then, I headed out to a shoal in 90 feet where you can see lots of fish and drift in the fast river current. It was a fantastic dive! My suit was mostly dry and I was going to get some hot coffee and spend the rest of the day in bed eating Chinese food and watching movies.

I put my gear in the back of my truck. I was renting a motel room for the season just 5 minutes from the dive site. It was raining when I surfaced and it was cold so I decided to just drive back to my room then remove my drysuit, take a shower, get coffee, and eat leftover Chinese. As soon as I approached the driveway into the motel, I felt a strange bubbling in my left foot. Then, I felt tingles from head to toe. My ears began to ring loudly and my vision blurred. Oh! Please God. Don't let me be bent. I knew something was very wrong. I pulled up to my room and quickly took my suit off. While underwater, I really had an urge to have a bowel movement. The feeling came over me again so I sat on the toilet. I couldn't go. That had never been a problem for me. I grabbed a 100% pure oxygen bottle I used to accelerate decompression schedules from 20 feet to the surface and started to breathe. First aid for DCS is 100% oxygen and transport to a recompression chamber ASAP. I lay in bed breathing O2 and started to feel better. I went back into the bathroom. Success!

I came out and called the Divers Alert Network. DAN has doctors and medics standing by 24/7. I told the medic who answered the phone that I was bent. I wanted to verify that the recompression chamber in Syracuse was the closest. It was. It was also available. The choice I had was to drive 90 minutes to Syracuse myself or drive to River Hospital which was right next to the shipwreck I had just been on. The medic and I agreed that I could lose consciousness and my symptoms could worsen and my best bet was to go to River Hospital. On the way to River Hospital I breathed 100% oxygen through a regulator.

I didn't pray much. I simply put it in God's hands even though I was terrified. I called my mother and called my girlfriend and told them what was happening. God has really outdone himself, at times, in my life as a Cosmic Lifeguard. I survived 3 blackouts while freediving. One often is fatal. The day my brother got married one Spring, I was heavily into skydiving. I was on my way to the reception when I saw one of the guys from my skydiving club standing along the interstate near our little drop zone. I stopped and asked if he'd had an off-field landing. He told me a guy jumped E.J.'s chute and it had malfunctioned. A riser broke, spinning the skydiver around until he cut away the main and deployed the reserve. They were looking for the main canopy. Great. E.J. and I were gym buddies. He had broken his leg at the drop zone in the winter when he slipped on ice on the walkway. I was using his new chute about 2 - 3 times a week, That could have been me. I'm not sure I wouldn't have panicked and died. I'm not a big fan of skydiving emergencies. When I lived in the Cayman Islands, I was run over by a car at 40 or so mph. The car struck me in the base of the spine then I crashed through the windshield and was thrown to the ground behind the car. I had a concussion, amnesia, but not a single fracture. Just torn tendons and ligaments and the mother lode of road rashes. The car was totaled. I wasn't. Once while surfing, something bumped the bottom of my board, took off a fin and left a fist sized hole in the fiberglass.

Several of my friends had been bent and every one had been fine after treatment. I felt like the God who showed His presence in my life rescuing me from extraordinary circumstances was going to be with me like all the other times. I said a prayer and felt peace.

I parked in the lot, stopped breathing the 100% oxygen, and walked into the hospital and told them I was bent. The first thing they did was treat me like I didn't know what I was talking about. I explained that I was the international training director for the oldest technical scuba diving agency in the USA and dive medical technician. Then, one nurse told the others that I was the diver who dove alone all the time and I probably deserved it. What? Solo diving is now acceptable today due to redundant equipment. We have C-cards for it. I taught the course. I sternly told her that and added ... "and I'm the only cave diving instructor IN THE WORLD certified to teach solo cave diving!" They took me to the ER and started "treatment."

They didn't believe that I had the bends. They assumed that I had a stroke or something. I showed them the blotches all over my skin we call "skin bends." I needed O2 and chamber! They instead took me to X-Ray. They did head and chest. They got me to a table and started an I.V. and put a nasal cannula on me. I told them I needed an oxygen mask. The cannula would dilute the O2 to 30%. My cell rang and it was my buddy Bob who owned a dive shop in town. I told him I was bent and in the E.R. He came right over. He saw the nasal cannula and remarked, "That's not helping you."

"I know. Tell them that."

 We tried to get the physician assistant in charge of the ER to call DAN and ask to speak to a hyperbaric medicine physician. He wouldn't. He told me they called an ambulance. I figured the ambulance would be the one the volunteer fire company had a few blocks away. We waited ... and waited ... and waited. Bob suggested we just get in his truck and go. We told the hospital I wanted out. They said the ambulance would be there any minute. My symptoms kept getting worse. Double vision, breathing problems, pain, numbness, dizziness, ringing ears, loss of balance. Finally, the ambulance arrived.

They told me the hospital called it in as "transport only." They had made another couple of runs while I had been waiting.

7 hours after the onset of symptoms, I was finally placed in the chamber. Multiple days of chamber rides in Syracuse, NY and in Scranton, PA failed to resolve all my symptoms. The numbness in my limbs went away. My balance was better, but the severe swaying in my head, double vision, trouble processing motion, pain, nausea, constant rashes, acid reflux if I eat anything but yogurt and milk -- even with Prilosec and Protonix is permanent. Neurologists, neuro-ophthalmologists, ENT's, hyperbaric physicians, and therapists couldn't make a dent in the symptoms. After a year, they said if I didn't improve, it most likely never would. In fact, lesions form in brain DCS injuries and mimics MS. My only hope is either a miracle from God or that a lesion forms quickly in some important brain tissue controlling the heart or respiration. Every day, I'm being tortured. Imagine getting off a crazy amusement park ride where your equilibrium is affected and you walk drunkenly and feel like things are still spinning. Then, imagine it never stops. My right eye has bouncy vision and is useless for anything other than not being blind. My hair has grown long, my beard has grown in, and I wear an eye patch, but I cannot go outside even for a walk because I am too dizzy and can't process distances beyond small rooms.

As a cave diving instructor, I worked with military divers. If you are a soldier and being tortured, you can't hold out indefinitely. The goal is to just hold out to maintain operational security. Then, do your best to provide as little factual information as possible. In my case, I'm holding out for ... nothing really. I'm wrestling with VSED (voluntarily stopping eating and drinking) which seems natural to me. Or, eating and just living in a world of misery I cannot even express. No dog would be left to suffer like this. I know God can work miracles and I've had lots of people praying for me. Mentally, I can't hold out indefinitely. Quality of life on a scale from 1 - 100 is a 1. I can watch TV and use the computer. My brain can't process visual motion. It's a nightmare.

In high school, our youth group went to see the movie, Joni, the true story of Joni Eareckson , a seventeen-year-old girl who becomes paralyzed after a diving accident. Through her physical, emotional and spiritual struggles, Joni learns to trust in God. I imagined how I might live my life if paralyzed, blind, or missing limbs. I thought about how to cope with cancer. Now, I'm jealous of everyone who has a fast-acting cancer or even those who've been crucified. If God would let me pay for my own sins on a cross, and I could get out of life tomorrow, show me the Romans. As Christians, we are taught that God is the giver and taker of life. But, I'm caught between the cracks. I don't know if just letting go of life by not eating or drinking is suicide or just a natural way that an animal or a human just gets too ill or bone tired to do. I wish friends and family would just stop bringing me food. My mom was hospitalized for gout and everyone was tending to her. They forgot about me. It was easy to lie in bed and sleep constantly without trying to sustain life. It felt ... peaceful. My sister was just here with my nephew. She has MS. She was hospitalized the same day they brought me to Scranton for treatments closer to home. At first, they thought she had a stroke. Late onset at 48.

So, now I'm trying to figure out if stopping the daily, most horrendously miserable, torture I would never want another living creature to bear is suicide, of if the strong desire to not eat, is nature's way of telling a creature, "You're too damaged to live. You've suffered enough. Let go." If it's natural, could it be God's way?

Luke 6:31 "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If I met someone suffering this way, and could feel what they felt, I'd shoot them in the head right away and gladly spend my life in the penitentiary knowing I loved another so much I gave away my freedom to take away their agony.

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Trace, your story is very compelling and I commend you for courageously writing about your experiences. There is nothing I can say to relieve your physical suffering, but I thank you for sharing your story so that others might learn about the specific hazards of diving. Was it a combination of holes in your wetsuit/depth and low temperatures that contributed to the bends?

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52 minutes ago, Darin said:

Trace, your story is very compelling and I commend you for courageously writing about your experiences. There is nothing I can say to relieve your physical suffering, but I thank you for sharing your story so that others might learn about the specific hazards of diving. Was it a combination of holes in your wetsuit/depth and low temperatures that contributed to the bends?

I am not sure what caused it. I was using a Shearwater dive computer. It cleared me to ascend. I added safety decompression stops to off-gas longer at 20 and 10 feet. I've been much, much colder on many dives.

I was awarded the SSI Platinum Pro 5000 Award for 7500+ lifetime dives in 2014 and the Hal Watts Elite Cave Diving Award for 1000+ cave dives. I generally make 100 cave dives a year and 160 wreck dives. I probably made another 1,000 dives between 2014 and 2018. I was diving every day for months so maybe the tissues were just hammered.

I went to the gym at 4 am. I may have caused bubbles to shunt through the heart while lifting.

The gradient factor in the computer is user adjustable. I set mine to stop me 10% deeper and surface with 10% more nitrogen than the factory settings. I had a saw tooth profile meaning I had to descend to 90, ascend to 40, then descend deeper to 90, then ascend. Saw tooth profiles can give you bubbles. We now know that DCS is like a sports injury. At one time, they blamed the diver for mistakes. Now, you can do everything right and something goes wrong. My friend, Wanda, died after a dive to a 400 foot deep wreck off NC. The other divers she was with were fine, They all dove and ascended together. She became cyanotic on the boat ladder. Her computer was uploaded into a PC and showed she did everything right.

I should have stuck with what you and my brother do -- rebuilding cars. Risk getting crushed rather than bent.

Edited by TraceMalin
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The chairperson of the English department at my college told us the story of why he stopped being a Catholic. As a teenager, he got a job helping the coroner. Sometimes, the coroner would carefully weigh organs. Once during Lent, he had dinner at a Protestant friend's house and his friend's mom had made Hamburger Helper on a Friday. (Do they still have that in supermarkets?) When he confessed to a priest, the priest wanted to know how much hamburger he had consumed. He didn't know. He asked why? The priest told him it would be the difference between a mortal and venial sin. The priest wanted him to ask the mom. My professor imagined a sensitive electronic scale they used at the coroner's office. He imagined the coroner taking forceps and carefully piling hamburger on the scale one morsel at a time. Eventually 1 tiny grain of hamburger would tip the scale from a venial to a mortal sin. He figured if God would damn him to hell over a tiny grain of hamburger, that he'd either find another god or another church.

When it comes to suicide, the Bible doesn't say much about it. Murder is bad. Killing in combat? God even commanded the Israelites to kill. I can get drafted and sent to Vietnam and kill another who wants to live and be forgiven. Yet, end your own life early and it's unforgivable?

Those who jumped from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Did God intend for them to suffer the pain of the heat and flames? Did they commit a sin by jumping and hoping for a quick death?  If you didn't do all you could for yourself? You are just too lazy to reach for the water that would add an hour to your life? Why do we let dogs be put to sleep if it was God's will that the dog became injured or sick?

 

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11 hours ago, TraceMalin said:

The chairperson of the English department at my college told us the story of why he stopped being a Catholic. As a teenager, he got a job helping the coroner. Sometimes, the coroner would carefully weigh organs. Once during Lent, he had dinner at a Protestant friend's house and his friend's mom had made Hamburger Helper on a Friday. (Do they still have that in supermarkets?) When he confessed to a priest, the priest wanted to know how much hamburger he had consumed. He didn't know. He asked why? The priest told him it would be the difference between a mortal and venial sin. The priest wanted him to ask the mom. My professor imagined a sensitive electronic scale they used at the coroner's office. He imagined the coroner taking forceps and carefully piling hamburger on the scale one morsel at a time. Eventually 1 tiny grain of hamburger would tip the scale from a venial to a mortal sin. He figured if God would damn him to hell over a tiny grain of hamburger, that he'd either find another god or another church.

When it comes to suicide, the Bible doesn't say much about it. Murder is bad. Killing in combat? God even commanded the Israelites to kill. I can get drafted and sent to Vietnam and kill another who wants to live and be forgiven. Yet, end your own life early and it's unforgivable?

Those who jumped from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Did God intend for them to suffer the pain of the heat and flames? Did they commit a sin by jumping and hoping for a quick death?  If you didn't do all you could for yourself? You are just too lazy to reach for the water that would add an hour to your life? Why do we let dogs be put to sleep if it was God's will that the dog became injured or sick?

 

You sound like you are having very, very prevalent thoughts of suicide. Please understand you are not alone. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and I can tell you, this disease and the toll it has taken on me has led me to thoughts of suicide. But I can also tell you it is simply not worth it under any circumstances to end the miracle of your life.

Just pray TraceMalin. God is the Great Healer. The name of Jesus is oozing with the healing powers of God. Use specifics during prayer. I have prayed for your cardiovascular system and I urge any reading this to join me in prayer for our brother TraceMalin. Peter was not Jesus, but he healed a man who could not walk by using the gift of prayer God gave us just as Jesus did for countless others. 

I have seen people, including myself, healed by the name of Jesus. I do not believe any obstacle that stands between you and happiness is greater than the power of God. 

I highly recommend praying in tongues too. Some people say God has to gift it to you but that is only half true. It's a gift,but it's available to any believer who will accept it. 

Please tell me what other body parts I can pray for? I am feeling for you very deeply, brother. 

Edited by AngelInTraining93
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We all suffer in this life. Jesus was outright tortured and killed for us. Paul repeatedly prayed for some unknown affliction to be lifted from him. If you are thinking about suicide please bear in mind that the act makes statements. It's like saying you don't trust God to handle it and that He either doesn't have a purpose for it or that you're choosing to turn your back on that purpose. I'm sorry if that sounded harsh. It's not intended to be a judgment of you, just an opinion on suicide in general. As someone who's contemplated it before it's something that came to my mind and now it's cemented there as my view on the topic. Worthy will keep you in prayer and I hope you can find some relief in whatever form it takes.

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Thanks for the words of encouragement. I know what it is to suffer with hope. I overcame a rare childhood disease which required very painful treatments beginning at age 4. Trying to recover from years of abuse led me to lifting weights to get my strength back which led to the careers in fitness, lifeguarding and diving I had. I knew God was there for me and healing was going to happen. In this case, that hope is gone.

I gave myself a deadline like a POW trying to hold out for operational security. I didn't think I could last a month. I struggled for a year. This isn't mild. It's severe. I've been seasick before and dizzy from an ear infection. This is completely different. It's pain, severe sway and spin with motion, ringing in the ears like being trapped in a box with after a gun shot, food isn't enjoyable, itchy skin, and vomiting.

I had just had 3 vitrectomies, 3 laser eye surgeries, and two cataract surgeries on my eyes and emerged with 20/10 vision. Every day, I was praising God, wholeheartedly for amazing vision. We often say we praise God, but every moment I walked outside and had the most vivid view of the beauty God made, I felt like the blind man whose sight was restored. Pure joy and a feeling of indescribable gratitude. I developed really bad eye floaters at 40 so I took the risk to have them removed. I spent the entire decade of my 40's getting eye surgery. As soon as it was behind me the decompression sickness totally damaged my vision. It had nothing to do with the surgery. That was all eyeball stuff. It hit me in the vision and balance areas of the brain. It would be like if Abraham actually had to sacrifice his son without the ram being given to him.

Mentally, I'm fine. I've been evaluated and apparently I'm more sane than most of the population. I'm not even depressed. I'm just tortured. Torture breaks you down. It's exhausting.

My cardiovascular system is great. It's my brain steam, cranial nerves, brain, and ocular motor systems that are damaged.

Legally, voluntarily stoppage of eating and drinking isn't suicide. It's legal in all 50 states. As far as morally, that's a different issue.

Edited by TraceMalin
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Trace, who is there for you? What are your prayers? 

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I've got my mom, brother, sister, nieces, and nephews. Sonya had to move out of state to care for her dad. Her mother needed help. We're still together. I tried to get rid of her, but she won't have it. As far as prayers, either heal me or kill me. The current state isn't an option. I don't believe that God predetermines things for us. I think Paul meant salvation was predetermined for all mankind not individual believers. I think if Paul were here to ask he'd say he meant it for mankind in general. That makes sense that God had a plan for humanity and gave people free will. I believe God can intervene, but doesn't necessarily have a plan for everyone's individual life. Most Bible verses in the O.T. and N.T. can be attributed to mankind as a whole. The ones that point toward individual plans seem to be when someone is asking the Lord to intervene or the person knows they are special which is why they are in the Bible in the first place. God could very well have a plan for David, but not for the 4th soldier in line behind him.

An example would be: Proverbs 3:5-6 5Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

As an English major, I could make a 100% valid and powerful argument, even within the full context of all of Proverbs 3, that this could apply equally to following the law of the Torah vs. being guided by faith vs. both equally. That's why we have so much dissent with one another. The Bible isn't crystal clear like my 1992 NCAA Lacrosse Rulebook. I had just gotten my rulebook and was in a religion class when I brought up the fact that the NCAA lays out exactly what it is I can and can't do, yet God isn't as clear in the Bible with our souls on the line. Father Barone looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "Yeah. But, are you going to read it?" I laughed. "Maybe God knows the appeal of a little mystery?" Touch'e, Father.

Edited by TraceMalin
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