I notice the title of this group includes "Lessons Learned", so while I sit here suffering I think I'll tell my little tale in the hopes that I can discourage at least one or two from following my lead...
By way of background, I'm a dive shop owner...and a PADI Master Instructor. In fact, for my dive shop, I'm the main instructor. I've calculated that I have been working an average of 88 hours a week for the past 18 months. Life has been hectic indeed ever since we took over the dive shop.
My problems started right after Thanksgiving. The first time I noticed something amis was when I looked around at the students in one of my classes and noticed they were all wearing just T-shirts. I had on an undershirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, and a fleece jacket. Hmmm. Over the next few days, I started going into cycles of fevers and chills. It was exactly like the Malaria I experienced 40 years ago in Vietnam, courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps. The only difference was that my lungs hurt--badly--the whole time. But did I do anything about it? Nah! I took some aspirin, got some cough syrup to try to keep the coughing down, and kept right on plugging away.
I remember doing one Open Water class pool session that was particularly painful. I was very weak, even dizzy, but plugged away at it anyway. Things kind of came to a head one Saturday when I took a couple of students, along with a couple of staff helpers, for the 4 Open Water Rescue Scenarios in the PADI Rescue Diver course. I barely had the energy to swim out from shore and then had great difficulty keeping up with my students to evaluate their rescues. Truly, they didn't get their money's worth out of me that day! When I got back to the beach, I had to have help carrying my gear up the hill to my car. I couldn't make it on my own. For me, that was humiliating.
The next week I finally dragged myself in to see a doctor. The analysis was virtually immediate: pneumonia. The doctor gave me a slug of antibiotics and told me to come see him in another 10 days. After just 5 days, though, I was so weak I could not stand on my own. I was literally drowning in the fluids in my lungs. I went back to see the doctor, and he immediately sent me to the ER of the nearest hospital.
I spent 10 painful days in the hospital and finally got out Christmas Eve. I'm on the mend now, but healing very, very slowly. I'm now up to the point that I do NOT have to be on an O2 bottle while sitting still, though I have to use the O2 whenever I get up to move. Nobody will give me an estimate of how long it will take before I'm back to normal and can dive again, but I can hear the answer is "months". This is just killing me! I normally get 300-500 dives in each year, and now I haven't been diving since Thanksgiving. I'm stuck at home, can't teach, can't even work in the dive shop. I'm keeping myself busy working on all the application materials needed to apply for this July's Course Director Training Course, but I'm not even convinced I'll be in top shape for that by July 15.
So what's the lesson learned? It's that old Marine Corps message of "just suck it up" that bit me once again here. I let this thing go far too long before seeking medical help, and by that time it was a very advanced case of pneumonia. The doctor went poking around in my lungs with a fiber optic cable right after I went in the hospital and he concluded 4 out of the 5 lobes in my two lungs were completely non-functional at that point. I was living off only the top lobe of the right lung!
My message: pneumonia is a real killer. Learn the symptoms, and at the first sign of problems seek medical help.
Bruce
By way of background, I'm a dive shop owner...and a PADI Master Instructor. In fact, for my dive shop, I'm the main instructor. I've calculated that I have been working an average of 88 hours a week for the past 18 months. Life has been hectic indeed ever since we took over the dive shop.
My problems started right after Thanksgiving. The first time I noticed something amis was when I looked around at the students in one of my classes and noticed they were all wearing just T-shirts. I had on an undershirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, and a fleece jacket. Hmmm. Over the next few days, I started going into cycles of fevers and chills. It was exactly like the Malaria I experienced 40 years ago in Vietnam, courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps. The only difference was that my lungs hurt--badly--the whole time. But did I do anything about it? Nah! I took some aspirin, got some cough syrup to try to keep the coughing down, and kept right on plugging away.
I remember doing one Open Water class pool session that was particularly painful. I was very weak, even dizzy, but plugged away at it anyway. Things kind of came to a head one Saturday when I took a couple of students, along with a couple of staff helpers, for the 4 Open Water Rescue Scenarios in the PADI Rescue Diver course. I barely had the energy to swim out from shore and then had great difficulty keeping up with my students to evaluate their rescues. Truly, they didn't get their money's worth out of me that day! When I got back to the beach, I had to have help carrying my gear up the hill to my car. I couldn't make it on my own. For me, that was humiliating.
The next week I finally dragged myself in to see a doctor. The analysis was virtually immediate: pneumonia. The doctor gave me a slug of antibiotics and told me to come see him in another 10 days. After just 5 days, though, I was so weak I could not stand on my own. I was literally drowning in the fluids in my lungs. I went back to see the doctor, and he immediately sent me to the ER of the nearest hospital.
I spent 10 painful days in the hospital and finally got out Christmas Eve. I'm on the mend now, but healing very, very slowly. I'm now up to the point that I do NOT have to be on an O2 bottle while sitting still, though I have to use the O2 whenever I get up to move. Nobody will give me an estimate of how long it will take before I'm back to normal and can dive again, but I can hear the answer is "months". This is just killing me! I normally get 300-500 dives in each year, and now I haven't been diving since Thanksgiving. I'm stuck at home, can't teach, can't even work in the dive shop. I'm keeping myself busy working on all the application materials needed to apply for this July's Course Director Training Course, but I'm not even convinced I'll be in top shape for that by July 15.
So what's the lesson learned? It's that old Marine Corps message of "just suck it up" that bit me once again here. I let this thing go far too long before seeking medical help, and by that time it was a very advanced case of pneumonia. The doctor went poking around in my lungs with a fiber optic cable right after I went in the hospital and he concluded 4 out of the 5 lobes in my two lungs were completely non-functional at that point. I was living off only the top lobe of the right lung!
My message: pneumonia is a real killer. Learn the symptoms, and at the first sign of problems seek medical help.
Bruce
