“Divers become carbonated beverage.”
That's how Dr. David Harrison explained what happens to the human body when you go scuba diving.
Harrison is the medical manager of the Hyperbaric Unit at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) — not a place you normally want to be. The Ubyssey tagged along with the UBC Aqua Society on their recent visit to the chamber to take a tour and talk about scuba safety.
The hyperbaric chamber stimulates the pressures and gas levels experienced by scuba divers. The giant metal container delivers varying levels of oxygen to patients via see-through plastic hoods. The chamber can also pump air into itself to simulate pressures similar to those experienced by divers who reach depths of 200 feet (over 60 metres) below sea level. For those non-diver readers, that's known as really damn deep.
“Oxygen is really what I do,” said Harrison.
As a hyperbaric doctor, Harrison has one drug — oxygen — to treat over a dozen diseases. The chamber's meat and potatoes is treating diving-related injuries, but oxygen is a remarkably versatile drug. The chamber at VGH treats carbon monoxide poisoning, gas embolisms, gas gangrene, crush injury and traumas, anemia brain abscesses (they are like giant brain pimples inside your skull), flesh-eating disease, chronic bone infection (osteomyelitis), radiation injuries like the side effects of cancer treatment, burns, frostbite and diabetic non-healing ulcers.