Hancock

Hi Cedric, I have (had) H.I.M. and it is pretty bad. I first experienced it at the age of 48 or 49 after a trip to the Solomon Is. in 2002. I spent 46 hours or so in the water with a PO2 of about 1.1 over a period of 13 days. After this trip my eyes crashed and went myopic. I stayed within the Hamilton Repex tables. Regardless, my eyes only partially recovered. Prior to this experience I did not need corrective lenses. I've mentored a bit with Howard Hall who has of course experienced similar problems. He (we) think that the O2 exposure has caused the lens in our eyes to become rigid and less focusable. I've become almost hyper-sensitive to O2 exposure now and it does not take too much to have my eyes go very blurry. Howard has developed some good strong theories that it is not the breathed O2 but rather the O2 in the mask. It seems that contact lenses may help protect the eyes from the O2?!
Meanwhile I've developed cataracts at a relatively young age due to the O2 and had lens implants this month. I'm very hopeful that this will take care of my eye problems. I could elaborate extensively on this subject if you are interested. I also wrote an article about this in Imersed-Summer 03.
Dave (Meg10)