A deaf-defying dive!

Given that the Philippines is evidently a diver's paradise, it made sense for me to do all that I could to try to overcome my aquaphobia whilst on holiday on the island of Bohol. The first four days had been really enjoyable, so as a grand finale Soeren, Di and I decided to hire a diving instructor, don some scuba gear and explore the coral reef cliff face just beneath the water at the nearby island of Balicasag. 

Ever since I was a young boy, I have always felt really scared of water and overcoming my fear that day to get below the surface took a lot of conviction. Unfortunately, whilst the marine life beneath the waves was certainly very impressive, things didn't go quite as planned. 

First, I needed to calm myself down as I prepared to enter the water. Having watched both Di and Soeren do a backward flip into the sea, I had rather foolishly assumed that I would be allowed to climb down a ladder into the water. Instead my instructor told me I just had to take a step off the side of the boat but that was easier said than done. It felt to me as if I was walking the plank and as I stood looking at the deep ocean in front of me, I was absolutetly petrified. Thankfully, Di and Soeren were really supportive and it was their patience that eventually coaxed me into taking what for me felt like a giant step.

Before I could give myself time to change my mind, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, put my left foot forward off the edge of the boat and suddenly found myself falling through the air. I felt like a stone about to sink to the bottom of the ocean.

I instantly became aware of the chilling sensation of water all around me and the speed of my breathing immediately increased, due to a combination of fright and exhilaration.

During the next few seconds, the fear within me started to rise as I prepared to start the dive but could not stay calm. However, with my mask in the water looking down, I was able to see to a considerable depth without any problem at all and it looked really beautiful down there.

Yet the sound of the air bubbles escaping from my mouth was making me panic. The bubbles came up right past my ears and I could not only hear them, but also feel them. It does not seem natural to me to be in the water at all, so actually being below the waterline felt even more bizarre. In a strange way, I felt like a fish out of water. 

I had tried to dive once before, with friends in the Atlantic Ocean in Ireland. During that particular dive, I had panicked when I felt myself starting to be physically sick into my ventilator which effectively cut off my oxygen supply. The sound of the bubbles in my ears at Balicasag made me realize just how vulnerable I was down there below the water, and that if anything went wrong, the consequences could be disastrous.



This psychological fear was probably the hardest thing to combat as I then tried my utmost to muster the courage to go down. Eventually I succumbed to the inevitable and surrendered to the whims of my diving instructor who then slowly guided me down into the water. It was every bit as spectacular as I'd imagined.

However, the pressure on my ears began to increase the moment I left the surface and started to dive. I had experienced this exact same sensation the first time I had dived, so it was not a great surprise to find myself in pain the moment I disappeared below the waves here in the Philippines.

In order to deal with the changes in pressure when diving, it is important to try to equalize by holding your nose under water and blowing outwards into your ears. As my diving instructor took me a little deeper with every passing moment, I could soon feel the pressure on my ears growing stronger and the pain becoming ever greater. No matter how hard I tried to equalize, the discomfort kept increasing with every second I was down there.

I would estimate that I was about four metres below the surface when I frantically signaled that I needed to go back up. My ears were not equalizing and I was starting to panic with the ever-present sound of the exhaled bubbles in my ears. My instructor made the necessary adjustments to enable me to get back to the surface and as I started to rise, I could feel my ears starting to rumble loudly inside until I felt a ripping sensation in my left ear when I was only about a metre from the top. I wrongly assumed that this was my ears equalizing, and breathed a sigh of relief in the mistaken belief that my ears were coping admirably with whatever dangers the dive presented. The internal noise I had heard was in fact my left ear drum tearing due to its inability to cope with the strains of the increased pressure from the water, but I was completely unaware of this at the time.

After making my instructor aware of my need to take a breather on the surface, I did all I could to calm myself down, while psyching myself up for a second and final dive to get down to see the coral reef from close up again.  I composed myself, replaced my ventilator, took one last look at the world above the waves and went back down below the water.



With a supreme effort, I managed to calm myself enough to get so far down that I could actually touch the coral with my hand. Beautiful multi-coloured fish were swimming all around me, and I was then pleasantly surprised to see a huge turtle just a few metres above me.

Suddenly Di and Soeren reappeared, showing their approval that I had made it down to a depth of 10 metres. The pain was ever-present in my ears, as was the fear of drowning which was ever-present in my head. However, towards the end of the dive, I was nevertheless able to focus on the incredible world I could see all around me, rather than merely concentrate on taking my next breath to try to stay alive.



With a huge feeling of both relief and fulfilment, I headed back to the surface and felt like a million dollars when I took my first gulp of air as my head came up out of the water. The taste of blood in my mouth and throat was the first sign that everything was not as it should be, and the hours which followed are now a blur of pain and blood coming from my nose and ears. Soeren proved to be the voice of reason and with the flow of blood from my ear growing increasingly worse as the evening wore on, he arranged transportation to a local hospital. This in itself was an experience to remember. I was examined, apparently as a matter of routine, in the emergency room right next to a screaming baby on a bed who was having surgery performed on it. I protested in vain that I couldn't go in there as I had no mask or gown yet nobody from the medical profession who was present that night appeared to share my concern that contamination by germs and bacteria might be an issue. With seven people standing next to me all around the bed, I couldn't even distinguish the doctors from the nurses or the parents.  It was somehow a surreal yet fitting end to a most bizarre day from start to finish.

As a result of my injuries, Soeren and I had to cancel our flights back to Manila and endure a 21 hour boatride from Cebu instead. I am now receiving medical care at Makati Med and the specialist there is hopeful that the hole in my eardrum will be healed within the next 4-6 weeks.