Drydock

I'm writing this while perched at the end of a 3-meter diving board. Why am I perched here rather than flipping and twisting my way into the water below? Well, I've been drydocked for the past month and it's driving me absolutely crazy.

What could possibly keep me out of the water for 6 weeks? It took a pretty substantial event to land me in drydock. That event came in the form of emergency eye surgery on May 9th to repair a partially detached retina. I awoke one morning to find a small "hole" in my left field of vision. Thinking I had scratched my eye somehow, I made an appointment with my eye doctor for that afternoon. Little did I know that within a few hours I would be signing paperwork for surgery the next morning.

Now the first thing everyone assumes when they hear this story is that my retina must have started to detach because of my diving. That was my first question, too. Fortunately, my surgeon has assured me that there was nothing I did to cause the problem and diving had nothing to do with it. That said, I've been stuck on the pool deck until my eye finishes healing; not so much because of the spinning and impact forces associated with diving, but to avoid infection and allow the healing process to complete without complication. Remarkably, I'm healing faster than expected... faster than anybody my doctor has seen before.

I'm ready to dive again, my body says I'm ready and I'm already back to throwing flips on trampoline. I want back in the water so badly I can taste it, but alas there's still at least one more week of drydock in my future. I had a glimmer of hope a few weeks ago when the doctor said I could return to the water sooner than he expected... but, by "return to the water" he meant "get into the pool" not "hurl myself through space and hit the water head first from 15 feet in the air." My only consolation is knowing that I can't really return to the springboard until I can get a contact lens back into my left eye... it helps to see where you're going when heading down a diving board and spinning into the pool. My next appointment is June 24th and I'm hoping that my eye is healed enough to stick a contact in and hit the boards.

Until then, I've embraced my role as a diving coach at the Rose Bowl and look forward to my imminent return to the water. With any luck, I'll be submerged again very soon.