rhelsley

My experience with skin bends was after an OC deco dive several years back after diving a vpm-b profile cut from v-planner. The issue wasn't from the deco algorithm but I chose to help a fellow right his overturned 18' boat in shallow nearshore water shortly after the dive...very strenuous, jaw-clenching lifting and effort is what I attributed my episode to.

My symptoms was a patch of mottled-blotchy-red-purple-itchy skin on my upper chest and over my left shoulder. It was mostly cleared up by the next afternoon with no other symptoms, except something that I get after all dives, shallow or deep, deco or no deco.

I visited my local hyperbaric physician and described my skin bend, but more to describe a watery-squishy noise in my shoulder joints following most dives. I usually notice this condition when I'm showering in the evening following a day's dive or otherwise lifting my arms. I timed my doctors visit to occur immediately after a dive so he could hear for himself my physiological oddity. The physician was intrigued but had no definite answers, and assumed some kind of inflammation of the joints possibly due to heavy-shoulder loads or from arm movement during diving activities, but he didn't think the condition was related to dissolved gases.

Anyone else experience anything like this?


russell helsley