February 2014 I slipped and fell while on a scuba vacation, and it took 5 surgeries over the next 4+ years to repair the damage done to my arm – 2 shoulder surgeries, 2 wrist surgeries, and one elbow surgery [You can read about them here, here, here, and here.
December 2018 I finally dove again – just a short skills refresher dive. News Flash – I was rusty. But it was great to be back in the water again after nearly five years.
Fourth of July weekend 2019 I made another dive. Again a short shore dive. But this time I felt much more comfortable under the water.
This week, Spousal Unit and I are boat diving. It feels great to be back in the water again. We made two dives today, and so far my ears are cooperating (meaning I have been able to equalize the pressure in my ears throughout the ascents and descents during the dives). My ears don’t equalize as effortlessly as they used to, so we take our time descending from and ascending to the surface.
Before we dove today, I did physical therapy stretches and exercises and some very light therapeutic yoga. Post-dive tonight, I have a heating pad on my back. Getting older ain’t for sissies.
But I am very grateful just to be able to dive again. Scuba is something Spousal Unit and I really enjoy doing, and we have been diving together for over twenty years. It would have been a great loss if we were no longer able to dive together.
I have to pace myself – we aren’t doing much else on days we are diving. I prep for our dives with the exercises and stretches, we eat a healthy meal in our travel trailer, make a couple dives, and then come back to our trailer, hang our gear out to dry, take showers, cook a simple meal, and relax on the heating pads while logging our dives.
I may be doddering along. I may accept help from the boat staff to lift my gear on and off the boat (which I never would have done when I was younger and healthier). I may not be eating and drinking in restaurants and seeing the topside sights. But I’m here.
And I am willing to do whatever is necessary in order to be able to keep diving with Spousal Unit. I hope we have many more decades of diving together.
And I appreciate, in a way I never did before, that being able to dive is a privilege. Even if you set aside the costs involved, many people don’t enjoy sufficient health to be able to dive. For nearly five years, I didn’t have sufficient health to be able to dive.
So I’m going to enjoy every dive I get, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to be able to keep diving with my favorite buddy.
