Scuba Diving, Muddy Shoes and Sports Cardiology
Scuba Diving
The main reason for the trip away at the weekend was for Morgan to do the confined water parts of his PADI Open Water Diver qualification. We had been trying to do this for a while, but coronavirus, GCSE exams and a heart attack all got in the way of our plans. Trips to Malta were cancelled. A couple of trips to DM Diving had been cancelled too, but finally things were looking promising.
Morgan and I arrived in Swindon where we met Paul from DM Diving and someone called Laura. Paul was going to be our instructor for the day and Laura was helping out.
The Swindive facility was impressive. The pool was their own dedicated pool. Not huge, but large enough and with a maximum depth of 3m perfect for teaching. The whole building was just for the Swindive club. It had a meeting / training room, changing rooms and showers, the pool, a large garage in which two RIBS were housed, a kit room and a compressor room. Upstairs the whole floor was dedicated to a function room and bar.
Dive Training
After a brief intro and some paperwork Morgan got changed and jumped into the pool. He had to start with a 200m swim and 10 minutes of treading water to assess his abilities. That was all fine. Paul then set to his training. It was all fairly basic stuff, setting up and using the equipment, various safety things and plenty of practical skills such as mask clearing, buoyancy control, emergency procedures and such like.
There were a few little bits that Morgan struggled with to start with but the beauty of the one-to-one session was that there was plenty of time for him to practice the new skills until he was comfortable doing them.
I sat on the poolside watching and probably picked up a few bits of info here and there.
Dive Refresher
I used to Scuba Dive lots years ago. I have BSAC Sports Diver, Dive Leader and Advanced Diver qualifications in my log book. However, when I looked at my logbook the last entry was in 1989. I thought that a little refresher was in order! I did check with my cardiologist first and got the go ahead from him to do so.
The second half of Morgan’s course involved some slightly more advanced techniques building on what he’d done in the first half along with some rescue techniques. I therefore jumped into the pool with him. This was the perfect opportunity for me to re-acquaint myself with the kit (some of which had advanced a little since 1989!), run through the more advanced techniques and to do the rescue techniques with Morgan. We did of course both need a buddy to ‘rescue’.
All went well and after a few hours in the pool Morgan had completed the confined water aspect of his open Water Diver qualification and I felt comfortable once again. He’s already done the theory section so now he just has to repeat the techniques he has learnt in the pool in Open Water – time to plan a holiday in Malta once again.
Muddy Shoes
After our Diving we had to spend a couple of days at my parents house as I had an appointment with a Sports Cardiologist on Monday evening. We didn’t do a huge amount. I went for a nice little run on Sunday morning. It turned out to be very muddy.
I did come across a lovely looking house. I could see it as I ran across a muddy field. I then emerged onto a lovely arched bridge over a waterway with swans swimming on it.
The bridge turned out to be a footpath over the pond in front of the perfect looking house. They had a lovely looking summer house that extended out over the pond too. Not a bad place to live!
We had to take my Dad into Dursely on Monday morning so after that we headed to Slimbridge for a walk along the Sharpness Canal.
Yet again it was very muddy and slippery. Probably not the best of choices for my Dad who had just had some drops put into his eyes so couldn’t see anything. A lack of sight whilst walking along a super slippery canal-side path probably isn’t ideal!
We then headed into the pub for a nice lunch.
Cardiology
The cardiology appointment was useful and somewhat reasurring but there wasn’t much new to be learnt. As before, they are fairly confident that the ongoing chest pains I have aren’t cardiac related. They don’t have an answer for what is causing the chest pain though and only base that assessment on the fact that my ECG looks good and the fact that I did well on the Exercise Stress Test.
As far as exercising goes, they are fairly happy for me to do whatever I feel comfortable with. He did however say that they don’t really have any research or guidelines on exercising at the level I’d like to after a heart attack. This means they can’t give me any recommendations and did suggest that I only train with others. He even went as far as saying that it would probably be best to only do ‘hard’ efforts at a facility where a defibrillator is nearby! I’m not sure that relying on the presence of a defib is really a good strategy, I’d prefer not to have to require one if at all possible.
All in all it was a good weekend away and we achieved everything we had planned.
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Hmm I agree much better to not need a defib! I guess they are covering themselves too as no research ever done on the sort of level you want …Trust you to ve awkward.
I was good to see you both