Age, Illness, Bob Marley, and Scuba Accidents

[billt4sf]

I'm also one of the older divers .....
I like the physical guidelines from PADI
http://www.scouting.org/filestore/HealthSafety/pdf/padi.pdf
, which include being able to do 3 minutes on treadmill up to 13 METS. And I try to test myself to that level at the gym.

You must not be very old, or maybe you're very lucky. AFAIK 13 METS is quite a lot. Walking at 7kph is 5.3 METS. Biking at 30 kph is 9.8 METS. I'm pretty sure I cannot do 13 METS, though I probably could even just a few years ago. I'm 66.

I feel like I have transitioned from "I'm in good shape to dive" to "Well, I guess I'd rather go while diving than go in the hospital with tubes all over me". Never thought I would ever get to this point...

- Bill

 

[gcarter]

I turn 58 tomorrow. I don't deny any health issues, and I get them treated if and when they arise. I scuba in the summer and ski in the winter. I treat neither as an adrenaline pump. Just as I modified my skiing as my knees started to give me what-for a few years ago, I have also determined that some of the higher current, higher work dives I have been doing are no loner fun so I have stopped doing those dives. I still don't really mind the cold, or the deep - did 150 FFW and 4.4C on the Forest City off Tobermory a month ago - but when it bothers me, I will stop. Called what would have been my 300th a couple of weeks ago because I didn't like how the previous dive went. 2nd dive started at the 1st dives exit, and current was stupid. So I did it another day.

All that is to say, I don't dive unless it is fun. If I need to be worried about my safety because of health or any other reason, I won't do the dive. Age is just a mindset, a number. It may be indicative but it is not deterministic in and of itself.

 

[Hank49]

Yeah, getting old. I'm 62. Stayed pretty fit my whole life. Water. Bodybsurfing, surfing, scuba diving and for the last 15 years, free dive spearfishing.
Here in Phuket they have decent surf so I got out in the waves...until one day I got pitched over the falls, came up and couldn't move my left arm. I thought I'd had a stroke, or a Transient Ischemic Attack, basically a mini stroke with no permanent damage.
But after a brain scan and a follow up MRI, it was determined I had a brain trauma causing bleeding. No need surgery but not sure about free diving back home in Belize.
Since it happened, I've been pretty bummed. The only water time I've had is siphoning shrimp tanks.
We'll see....old age ....

 

[ejb190]

There's a huge difference between diving with a known, quantifiable risk factor and being unwilling to address a possible medical condition because it might put an end to one's diving.