Last night, we had Katti over, who offered to make us dinner in our new pad.

She made a veggie curry with potatoes, peas, coconut cream, onions etc.. very nice. She also made small veggie patties to accompany it.

Very tasty… Compliments to the chef.

Then waking early this morning, Jen has started teaching another Open Water class with Nathan. While she was doing this, I ran a few errands, before going back home and doing not much. Bored bored bored! Its hard being out of the water, but in a few days I’ll be back…

After Jen had finished class, we went to “Vibe” as an instructor had returned to the island. Free BBQ for Jen (no veggie stuff for me), and then returned home for our nightly episode of Big Brother.

Jen fell asleep on the sofa…. bless.

We woke this morning, and headed to the school to do our Deep and Nitrox Specs. We had prepared our tank in the last couple of days, so no need to do this morning… We jumped on the boat and headed for Chumphon… which is where the fun begins…

For the last couple of days, I have been getting what is called “Reverse Squeeze”… this is when the sinuses are slighty congested and can be painful when you come up at the end of the dive cos the air is trapped in your sinuses… In actuality, congestion can be fatal if you experience this in your lungs, because if the air can’t escape as you come up, it will cause your lungs to burst.. Thankfully my congestion was sinuses only.

So yesterday, as you may recall, was a bad one… From 8 metres I felt bad head pain, and a pop behind my eye,causing a brief blindness in my left eye (slightly worrying!) when I forced myself to come up cos I couldn’t wait any longer for the air to escape…

I went to the Pharmacy last night and they gave me some tablets to take 30 mins before todays dive… they said take with food… and I forgot…. DOH! So, I took a tablet this morning, forgot to eat and kitted up ready for the first dive.

Fully aware that I may have equalising issues on the way down if my sinuses were not clear, I let the people we were with know that if I had difficulty on the way down, I would abort the dive… I didn’t and down we went to 32 metres and did the skills that we were required to do.

Unfortunately, at 20 metres down on our way up slowly… I started feeling the pressure in my head again.. I can’t explain the feeling of inevitabilty I felt.. in my mind I was thinking “This is going to get very painful, and I hope I don’t seriously damage something… but what other choice did I have… I couldn’t stay down there forever…

At 14 metres, it was getting quite painful, and I made Jen and the Course Director (big cheese) aware.. I was also feeling sick, had palpitations, hot and sweaty, and shaky.. So we get to the rope, and I make my way up super slow… Jen stayed with me, and probably took 15 minutes to come up, stopping every few inches or so… taking my mask off, blowing my nose… trying to clear (under pressure) my sinuses.

At 5 metres, we have to do a safety stop for 3 minutes on every dive… and me blowing my nose….then, I guess, some capilllaries burst in my sinuses… and whooooaaa… loadsa blood outta my nose… with some real big clots…!!! I mean MASSIVE!

Guess I have got rid of the congestion…

So we get up on the boat, clear the blood, and I rest and get water with electrolytes… After 30 mins or so the shakiness goes, weakness goes, etc…. and then I remembered that I didn’t eat when I took the tablet… thats why I felt so bad…. what a donkey…

So now, to let my sinuses recover and chill a bit… I shall stay outta the water for a few days…

Note to oneself.. if sinuses are blocked… screw the dives… and just wait till I’m better… no more tablets to try push through…

Class started around 10am as Toby, the other MSDT was finishing his Oxygen provider course which was great as both Simon and I were feeling a bit worse for wear.  I still can’t believe that Englands 2nd goal was disallowed, that might have been the turning point and maybe in another life we would have gone on to win ..oh well. Well done Germany  ..again!!

In class, we sat down and one by one, stood up to give our prepared presentations.  I got a fit of the giggles during mine, for whatever reason, I just dont know.  I blame Si, as he’s always making me laugh.

For our Digital Underwater Photography spec, were shown a slide show on the Do’s/ Donts of photography which we knew most of anyway and then how to check/set up the camera and housing.  This I must say will very easy one to teach students.   I was just eager to go out and have a play with the camera out on the afternoon boat.

Just so you know, we are each assigned specific skills to brief and debrief on every dive, we’re not just having fun 😉

Before breaking for lunch we went over to the tank room where we analysed & marked up our 32% & 36% Nitrox tanks ready for tomorrows morning dives.   Each tank has to be analysed by the person who’ll be using it, equivalent air depth worked out, marked, dated, depths and  checked and signed off.

On the boat, we briefed each dive.  First was a multi level to 30 meters. Each of on this took camera’s but the viz what terrible that we aborted the 30 meter and just stayed at a corner of a pinnacle snapping away, basically playing with the camera / settings.
The second dive was at Green Rock, where we took photo’s of a new buoy being deployed in the first 10 minutes and then had a nice leisurely dive.

Unfortunately Si had really bad sinus problems and suffered a nasty reverse block.  It took some time to ascend and once on the surface told me that it felt as though his eye had popped out and his head was throbbing. When we returned to dry land, Si went to the Pharmacy to get some decongestant to enable him to complete dives the next day..(situation to be continued tomorrow!)

Returning home, Simon made dinner, a random mix of carrots, tofu, green beans, chilli, ginger, oregano, coriander, onions and tomatoes… After chucking a bunch of noodles in… it was a tasty treat and felt very nice to actually have a home cooked meal… boy was it spicy!!!

Bed by 11pm ready for early dives the next morning…..