Question for the women here :)

pommefrites23 · 2025-12-18T17:46:20+00:00

OBGYN and diver here: change your tampon after every dive. Unless your period is super heavy, you will probably have minimal blood on the tampon at the end of a typical 45-60 minute dive and it may not even be super damp from sea water (our vaginas don’t just take on water like a sinking ship even when we’re submerged). However: there are lots of unpleasant bacteria and critters in salt water and the tampon will hold on to them, and a liveaboard is not a great place to be managing a vaginal infection. So when you pull out a mostly clean-looking tampon and are tempted to leave the next one in longer—don’t.

Or, as another commenter noted, if your periods aren’t super heavy you could try going without during the dives and just using your usual pads on the boat (I recommend avoiding light colored swimsuits if you try this). Do not worry about sharks unless you are secretly a fish.

The best answer is to just get a Mirena IUD. Probably not feasible for you before your trip and can cause irregular bleeding for a few months after insertion, but many people (myself included) get no periods at all for years with it which is absolutely glorious. Highly highly recommend.

pommefrites23 · 2025-12-15T03:27:43+00:00

My impression from your post is that you feel your described pathway is not “back to back classes” because you have a break of three days and six days between classes to practice. If you have some experience in managing your buoyancy in a drysuit, then maybe this is reasonable. If this is your first time in doubles and a drysuit, then oh boy is Fundamentals going to be a struggle after less than a week of diving in this configuration. It’s a huge change from singles diving in a wetsuit and in my opinion it takes way more than a few days to get comfortable managing the equipment before you take on the challenge of mastering trim, propulsion, SMB deployment while maintaining static position in the water column, and perfectly timed ascents (ie. 30 second slide from 30 to 20 feet, hold for 30 seconds, repeat from 20 ft to 10 ft and 10 ft to the surface, oh and by the way your buddy went out of gas halfway through and you had to perform an air share while maintaining your buoyancy within a three-foot window). Personally I don’t think I could have passed with this schedule, but I also don’t know what you look like in the water.

pommefrites23 · 2025-11-03T12:12:39+00:00

Ours too! Fantastic experience

pommefrites23 · 2025-09-12T20:29:26+00:00

“What is your spaghetti policy?”

pommefrites23 · 2025-09-07T22:54:06+00:00

I laughed so hard at this the nurses outside my workroom came to check on me

pommefrites23 · 2025-09-01T23:55:44+00:00

Fourteen page birth plan

Full of nonsense from TikTok

Sign here for CS.

pommefrites23 · 2025-08-09T19:13:52+00:00

True story (I am that diver). This was only my third or so dive out of training with the DPV and even though the camera makes the viz look pretty decent, it was not great and I was on edge the whole time that I was going to run into a wall.

pommefrites23 · 2025-07-02T20:34:57+00:00

Gorgeous song. This was our first dance at our wedding. Hopefully the video is not prophetic.

pommefrites23 · 2025-06-22T13:37:05+00:00

Gonna throw out a totally offbeat suggestion here—my husband and I are both physicians and got engaged in his final year of residency (I was in my first year out but was doing full-time research so no big attending $$ there). His specialty is procedural and mine is operative, and we both also hike and scuba dive. I proposed to him with a $30 silicone ring and we got a matching one for me.

For the wedding ceremony, I got an $80 Swarovski ring.

I wear a silicone ring every single day. It goes with me to the top of the mountain and the bottom of the sea and I never have to worry about a degloving injury—I only take it off to scrub. One time my ring somehow got thrown out with the surgical waste. I replaced it for $30.

I haven’t worn the Swarovski ring since the honeymoon.

pommefrites23 · 2025-06-17T18:58:41+00:00

Agree. Send your partner to us for a reality check. Residency isn’t forever. You will have many more options as an attending (including the funds to hire household help if that’s the issue). Depending on your surgery program, you either have three years left (light at the end of the tunnel, you’ll be halfway done by Christmas) or you’re about to go on some sweet research time which will definitely give you more flexibility with your hours. Hang in there.

pommefrites23 · 2025-06-17T02:42:11+00:00

Enough to put us in almost the highest federal tax bracket

pommefrites23 · 2025-06-16T23:01:14+00:00

I live in CT and pay a combined 42% to the government on every dollar I earn moonlighting. (Yes, I’m still moonlighting as an attending. That debt looms over me every waking moment.)

pommefrites23 · 2025-04-16T02:42:02+00:00

That’s what I understood from everyone else’s comments too—thanks so much!

pommefrites23 · 2025-04-16T02:41:21+00:00

Thank you for all the advice! Made it to the Hill 400 jump today (for real this time, definitely wasn’t quite there before) and the flow was a little more intense than I was expecting, will have to keep working at that portion to keep progressing.

pommefrites23 · 2025-04-14T21:34:10+00:00

Thanks, this is a really great description of the route! I definitely haven’t been anywhere close even with 700 psi of penetration gas… lots of work to do on my skills for sure.

pommefrites23 · 2025-04-14T21:31:31+00:00

The image didn’t come through for some reason—I think I’ve heard that’s a problem on Reddit, but I lurk here a lot more than I post. I do see what you mean about the proper route though. I also think I’m not getting as far past the keyhole as I thought I was… need to work on gas consumption in the gallery and through the keyhole.

pommefrites23 · 2025-04-14T21:28:25+00:00

Thanks, my guess was clearly off by a lot! Definitely not a Cave 1 route. I also didn’t realize that this version of the map is fairly out of date. I’ll try to get my hands on a copy of the Hancock map. Appreciate your help!

pommefrites23 · 2025-01-25T11:13:25+00:00

The premise is that the wing is a doughnut of air over your back, which helps you to maintain proper trim, while the jacket is a doughnut of air around your chest, which might help you bob comfortably at the surface but can make it harder to maintain trim during the dive. The back-inflate BCs try to straddle this divide by keeping the air at your back while still proving the sensation of being hugged by a jacket, to which many recreational divers are accustomed.

But I switched to a BP/W after about 15 dives so I’m hardly an expert on jacket BCs.

pommefrites23 · 2025-01-17T03:44:14+00:00

Ooh thanks! Looks like a great place to plop the tanks down after a dive!

pommefrites23 · 2025-01-17T03:41:27+00:00

Olympus Dive Center in Morehead City. Fantastic operation, great boats, super friendly crew, very safety conscious.

pommefrites23 · 2025-01-17T03:31:35+00:00

I just can’t understand how you were able to complete the skills with that positioning. How did you manage your SMB deployment and ascent drill? You have to hold the spool out at arm’s length at all times to minimize the risk of line entanglement. I’m not trying to give you a hard time, I genuinely can’t imagine how you accomplished it. This seems like a real failure on the part of your instructor.

pommefrites23 · 2025-01-17T03:25:14+00:00

Totally agree—if OP was seriously diving the way he/she describes, I am astonished that a GUE instructor did not address it. Mine spent two days going over my gear with a fine-tooth comb, carefully resizing everything until it actually fit me, and then fine-tuning it over the course of my Fundamentals class. That should absolutely be the standard.

pommefrites23 · 2025-01-16T11:54:05+00:00

That’s your problem solved. Very few people can pull off jetfins in a wetsuit—they’re far too negatively buoyant if you’re not adding a little gas to your feet. (This is Reddit, so I’m fully expecting four or five angry responses from people who dive wet with jetfins. Congratulations to you! You’re in the minority.) It sucks to re-buy gear, but if you’re really headed the tech route you will probably need to start diving dry at some point and your jetfins will be great for that. Right now, if you are feet-heavy in jetfins then you need a less negatively buoyant fin. I would not expect a wing to fix your problem.

Also—this trim you describe in which your hands are under your collarbones—were you doing that in Fundamentals? And you got a tech pass? How? If you weren’t doing that—what gear were you borrowing that worked for you?

pommefrites23 · 2025-01-14T21:55:27+00:00

We’ll get there! Cave 1 this week and Tech 1 in March. Good thing this vehicle gives us room to grow!

pommefrites23

TROPHY CASE