After my master thesis defense in Gent, Belgium, I went back in England to spend a week at the DDRC healthcare near to Plymouth. During my stay i completed an Emergency First response (EFR) course and the chamber operator module necessary to start a HSE commercial diving course. DDRC Healthcare is a fantastic charity, specialising in diving and hyperbaric medicine. All the people are met during this (too short) week were extremely friendly, enthusiastic and glad to share their knowledge. Jon Parlour, DDRC healthcare training officer and also passionate diver was my course lead for the week. He taught me how to drive hyperbaric chambers. As a part of my course, I had the interesting experience to dive to 40 meters inside the chamber. I thought it was quite different than diving in the sea.  During the descent, the temperature increases a lot and i needed to equalize my ear constantly, a way more than if I would do it for a “real” dive.  The other big difference was that I was really aware to become narcosis with the depth. At 40 meters, I could really feel like as I was drunk. They asked me to write the world “underwater” and it took me 5 long minutes! After that, I promise myself to never again dive on air deeper than 30 meters.

The center is equipped with four hyperbaric chambers. The biggest one is a Krug multi-place that can take up to 9 people! Then, there are two smaller Comex multi-place chambers and a Perry mono-place chamber.

In a naive way, prior my visit I thought the center was only a facility to treat divers with decompression illness (DCI), or ‘the bends’. Actually, only one thirds of the patients that they treat with hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) are divers. The centre mostly hosts patients with chronic, hard-to-heal wounds or tissue damaged as a result of radiation therapy for cancer. Many of them are diabetics with non-healing wounds, such as Diabetic Foot Ulcers, who may be facing amputation. Beside medical treatment the center have a research team led by Gary Smerdon who investigates the cellular responses to hyperbaric oxygen. Also, DRC healthcare propose a wide range of high quality training including medical, safety and hyperbaric courses. I really enjoyed my stay and i regretted i could not stay longer.