.jpg)
Sarah Westwood -
'I began to feel unwell – dizzy, dry-mouthed and nauseous. I got back on the boat and noticed my hands were shaking violently'
I am a naturally cautious person, but when I was 26, my ex-flatmates persuaded me to quit my design job in London and move to Australia. Ever since I was a child, I'd been obsessed with sharks and, after nine great months working in Sydney, I decided to head to the Great Barrier Reef to go diving.
I signed up for a PADI course with the most well-known company in the area, and after learning the basics, we took a seven-hour boat ride out to the reef for a three-day dive.
We saw giant rays, schools of parrot fish and, on the final morning, white-tipped sharks. I was so excited I had finally achieved my childhood ambition.
But as I returned to the surface, I began to feel unwell – dizzy, dry-mouthed and nauseous. I got back on the boat and noticed my hands were shaking violently. Something was wrong. I had just learned about decompression sickness, when nitrogen bubbles form in the bloodstream and tissues of the body.
It's caused by moving too quickly towards the surface of the water, where the pressure is lower. The symptoms, which can be deadly, fitted what I was experiencing. But as I had been at only 10ft and had come up very slowly, the diving instructors insisted it couldn't possibly be that. There was only a 1:38,000 chance. It must be dehydration.
Posted via http://batavia08.posterous.com batavia08's posterous
No comments:
Post a Comment