[the seal]

The persons hand is still holding something over my mouth and I feel cold and naked. I make an effort to get up. Someone yells “Hold him down, hold him down!” I use as much strength as I can trying to swim to the surface, I won’t die this way! I get up half way from where I’m lying down before they push me back down. Everything is still a blur but I can make out I’m no longer in the pool. My vision comes back a bit more; I start to breathe this cold air coming from something. Looking round at lights and a ceiling with blurred faces over me I make out a doctor. Then it hits me, I blurt out, “What have I done now!?”
Then I loose consciousness before getting any reply. I wake to find I’m in hospital, still really tired and cold. I sit up on my elbows to try and focus my vision on something and ask what happened. As I do my head starts to weigh too much for me to support and my vision fades to a blur. I lie back down trying to focus on something. I get enough energy to ask a nurse what happened and I am shocked to learn the truth. “You just had a near drowning experience.” she replies
I lie back down, thinking “How could this be?”
She continues, “your father and mother are on their way, they’ll be here soon.”I go back to sleep. I hear something and I see my dad in front of me. I try sitting up again, while he comes closer. I can only focus fully for a few seconds before everything becomes a blur, my energy goes away and I must lie down. He sits down and tells me I’m a bastard in Russian. Then Galina comes, a family friend, posing as my mother sitting down with my dad and just staring at me. Eventually I get enough energy to talk and since it was Galina’s birthday the day before I tell her happy birth day. My dad and Galina both start laughing saying thanks for the wonderful present. My energy comes back slowly; while the doctors slowly turn down the oxygen supply that I had thought was water. I eat, sleep and get shown x-rays of my lungs filled with water. Slowly the water is absorbed by my body from my lungs as I rest. I wake the next day to a huge appetite, no longer connected to all the monitors or oxygen supply. My grandparents come and my grandmother later brings me a foot long subway and the newspaper. A type of hazy feeling remained in the bottom of my lungs when taking deep breaths, like something was blocking the bottom air sacks of the lungs, which was obviously the remaining water. My mind was overwhelmed by the experience but one question I kept asking myself was. “If you fall of a horse you get back up again, but do you still get back on if you were almost killed?” I had recovered well enough to leave at 2pm with about 60% of my lungs total capacity back from what I felt. I caught the bus home and walked home quietly to rest.

bit more info on this
to mention once more, i was trying to go so far since i had the experience at clovely and was fine then.



When I did black out, there was no warning to it, just went dark and warm. when i did wake up it was probably from the guys rushing me from the ambulance sticking a needle into my vein, "the prick"
So when i regained consciousness i still thought i was in the pool, but since i couldn't see, (because my blood o2 was so low it looked like i was in the pool underwater), and i suddenly felt really cold. so yeah i thought someone maybe knocked me out and i was drowning. The oxygen i was being fed was cold and kinda felt like water. so my conclusion was, some basard/s is trying to kill me...
naturally you fight and i don't know how but i basically got up from the bed while the guys were pushing me down after i had been underwater and turned blue, still didn't stop me. But then yeah it sucks.
As 4 being in intensive care, had heart rate etc on me and when I was there they gave me a MRI and found a gold fish inside my head. Told me not to go diving again and stuff, spent the night there, woke up at 12am till 4am and just looked around like at other patients and talked to the nurses.
What still I find hard to get over is that, it’s not like I was totally ignorant about it. I rested for 20 sec after taking a training lap and recovery lap and asked myself if I was feeling like I should rest more and stuff.
Just remember how I looked at my watch and confidently thought “I will leave in 10min”

the thing with the black out that i had was that from memory i was swimming back normal breath stroke, not underwater... so i was taking a breath, then stroke etc. the doctor later gave me a in depth type of explanation of what happened, hey maybe i'll get him 2 post somethin up 4 us. he said my co2 receptors had stopped working, so from what i understand, when i went for the recovery lap there was alot of co2 in my body already and that pushed it over the limit. he said i must have been hyperventilating....
when i blacked out, that was when the warm feeling came over me, "feeling of the womb" kinda expresses it well. i didn't see a light or anything, funny if i saw a fish...

The doc also told me a story how some army trainees after going for a long run or sprint jumped into the pool and started doing the same thing, laps underwater. They all blacked out but were pulled out very soon. Also he showed me a picture of a kid, 3 years old fell into a bucket and stayed there for an hour….
Amazingly they revived him but he may have brain damage, his heart stopped beating for maybe 15min.
As for this character, my breathing stopped, after I copped enough chlorine pool water and was underwater for maybe 5min or so before being rescued. Brain damage wouldn’t make any difference to me…


Overall the moral of the story is, have a dive buddy with you and use the system. When ur at the bottom he is looking out for you on the surface, when he’s diving you’re looking out for him. It would have saved me typing this post. At least try to.