When I left our story, I was starting to feel ill with an hour left on the boat. I didn’t feel better when the hour was up, but someone said (and I knew) that I’d feel better in the water — there’s usually very little rocking motion when you’re diving. The mom of the family had said she felt better after vomiting, so I gave that a try over the back of the boat. My stomach heaved a couple times, and I felt better for about a minute in between, but found no lasting relief.

We got in the water, and I felt much worse bobbing on the surface. I was patiently waiting for the signal to go down, but there was some hold-up and I was feeling worse by the second. Thankfully, we went under and I did feel better. I took a bunch of photos, which you will see in a second, with the same caveat as the last bunch — first time doing any serious underwater editing, I like them, but they aren’t “true to colour”, really.

Before I get to the story, here’s a video of bubbles coming from the ground:

 

Before we got in the water, I asked about the protocol for if you need to vomit while diving. You keep your regulator (the thing you breath through) in your mouth. They said that your first reaction upon finishing vomiting, is to breath in, so you need something to breath in using. The regulator is designed to clear the vomit from itself. I didn’t think I’d need to know this – I’d just tried and failed 4 times on the edge the boat, I didn’t think I’d need it in calmer waters.

About half way through the dive Jake swam up to me with a squid in-hand. Here’s a video:

I don’t even know where it came from, but as this squid is blowing out his black ink, my stomach decides it’s had enough and I vomit into my regulator, in 60 feet of water.

It’s important to note, that it is not at all safe to just swim to the surface to deal with emergencies. From the last post, the nitrogen needs time to leave your body and if you suddenly rise up from 60 feet down because of an emergency, or because you think you have an emergency, you could end up with a worse problem than when you started. You’ve likely heard of “the bends”, and it’s when nitrogen bubbles in your blood suddenly get large, in your blood.

So as much as I might have wanted to, I had to manage this problem and maintain calm while my stomach was convulsing, where I was. I finished vomiting and tried to take a breath. But the first thing I felt was liquid coming back in. That was frightening – trying to take a breath, but finding only liquid. 2 things helped – 1, that the dive master was literally 1 foot in front of me so if I actually needed help, it was right there, and 2, knowledge that if I blew out of the regulator it would probably be better. So I took the last of my breath, blew out as hard as I could, and took a breath, hoping that it would be air. It was, and I took a couple regular breaths to make sure everything was ok.

But now my mouth tasted like vomit…I took a breath, pulled the reg out and while breathing out (never hold your breath) swooshed some sea water around my mouth, and put the reg back in.

I finished out the dive, and surfaced and got back on the boat and had a moment where Jake and I were telling this story from both of our points of view. Because he was just floating there holding a squid spouting ink while watching me lose my breakfast!

Back on the boat, I didn’t feel much better. I had some water and vomited again off the back of the boat. I briefly considered not going on the third dive I had planned, but again figured I’d be happier in the water than not.

We only had a half hour surface interval (as they are called) this time, so we boated off to our next location. I sat on the edge of the boat and tried to watch the island, with all of it’s glorious “not moving”. I regretted not being able to have a conversation with the family, but it was all I could do to focus on the land and hope I didn’t get worse. >.<

More of the story in a bit!