I was on a hot scramble in an FJ-4 out of Atsugi. Passing about 30M I couldn’t move or feel my right arm. Told the lead I had to abort. Had to pick up my right hand and set it on the side and use my left on the stick. Declared an emergency and got it back on the ground with only my left hand for stick and throttle. Flight surgeon said I had the bends.
In the haste of our scramble, my bailout O2 bottle hose had kinked up and gotten between the sliding canopy and the rail, so I never pressurized the cockpit. I didn’t notice because we were getting vectors and looking for the bogey.
I was lucky the nitrogen bubble blocked the nerves or I would have been in extreme pain. Cheated death again:-))
There was a (in)famous Tomcat guy that lost feeling in his left hand and declared an emergency because he thought he had the bends. He came back to the boat and after he got out of the cockpit he had a miraculous recovery. The exposure suit (dry suit) he was wearing was one of the ones that had the zipper from arm to arm and it had pinched the nerve in his left arm. He had basically put that arm to sleep.
Yes it could have easily been much worse — I’m thinking loss of consciousness, or the “staggers”, an inner ear problem.