And especially about planning a long dive trip. After doing some more research online and on this board, I am feeling spooked about going diving again. I was also under the impression that skin bends is not well understood and that the connection between skin bends and more serious DCS was not very well known either. After speaking with DAN immediately following the last incident, I was under the impression that having solely skin bends symptoms was not that dangerous. I really love diving, and was hoping to plan a live aboard trip a couple of months from now. I am wondering if I should stop diving or if being more conservative with my dive profiles and always diving Nitrox will be enough. They told me that as long as there were no neurological symptoms and it went away, I did not need any kind of treatment. DAN did think it sounded like skin bends. Again it went away within an hour or two. Even though I was on the big island of Hawaii, they told me there was not a dive doctor in the area. It was on my torso, under my armpit area. (I had not dived since the prior incident). The third time was six months later, also after four dives in two days. (I had done three separate single days of diving in between this trip and the first incident without any problems). It was just a tiny spot on my stomach and again disappeared within an hour or so. The second time was two years later after four dives in two days. I just took some Benadryl, applied some Cortisone cream and ended up diving the next day without incident (I thought it was an allergy or I would have stopped diving). It was mostly on my torso, but also on my thighs. It was a painful, mottled looking, flat rash which disappeared within a couple of hours. It started a couple hours after getting out of the water. There was a doctor in the group and she thought it was some type of allergy - that something had gotten into my wetsuit. The first time was on the 5th day of diving. Each time I was within the limits of my computer and had not gone particularly deep or ascended particularly fast according to my dive computer. I have now had what I think are skin bends three times.

Skin bends