volunteers who helped him overcome the bends.

Mr. Mongold, 41, and his wife Colleen Wyse, 42, were diving on wrecks around the Island on Sunday.

He surfaced and felt tingling and numbness in both hands -- a sign of decompression sickness, also known as the bends.

After calling a special divers' hotline number, he was directed to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital which is equipped with a recompression chamber.

"I spent five hours a day on Monday and Tuesday inside the decompression chamber,'' said Mr. Mongold, who arrived on the Island last Friday.

"Volunteers spent time in the chamber with me and when they first heard I was to have treatment they dropped everything on one telephone call to help,'' he added.

The hospital's recompression chamber is supported by more than 20 volunteers and provides emergency treatment for scuba-divers as well as those suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, crushed limbs and necrosis, where a piece of tissue dies.

Mr. Mongold believes the bends he suffered in Bermuda were a result of a milder case of decompression sickness he suffered while diving in Greece a few weeks ago.

"I came up with a tingling in my fingers which I ignored. It went away after a few hours. I was there on business and went back home to New York, then came to Bermuda for a vacation,'' he said. "It was lucky there was a recompression chamber here and that the volunteers are so knowledgeable.''