Nothing Can Keep John Down or UP
Who is John? John is one of my diving buddies from up in Ohio. Although not as old as me but probably more active in diving than I ever was.
I say probably because I was not keeping records since I began diving in 1956 where I dove every weekend. Logging dives was not something you did back then because no one, including myself, cared about how many dives you did or how deep and long you did them.
I think it was somewhere in the late ‘70s that someone mentioned that the charter operations were going to start checking diver’s logs to determine how experienced they were so I acquired a dive log and started entering each dive and the details that went along with it. Surprisingly, since I have been logging my dives no one has asked to see them. All they require is a verbal as to when you dived last.
Oh yes, back to John! John is one of our group of four that consists of me, my son Gary and another long time diver, Walt, who dive together whenever we get the chance. Gary and Walt live in Florida as do, I but John lives in Columbus, Ohio, where the winters are not as kind and the dive spots are limited.
John recently sent us an email on his New Year's Eve Dive in a local quarry. He and six other divers made the dive and John sent us a photo wearing his gear and the statistics he entered into his dive log. They went into the quarry at 11:55 PM on 2020 and came out at 12:25 AM on 2021. The air temperature was 30 degrees F, the water temperature was 38 degrees F and visibility was cloudy from 8 to 10 feet.
Now this isn't the only time John gets into his dry suit and braves the winter weather to dive the quarry, he makes regular dives there with other like-minded divers in the area. There was no ice on the water’s surface this time, but that's not always the case. The following photos will attest to some of the times they had to experience more severe conditions.
John has been diving since 1975 and has logged over 1,200 dives to date, but that's not the story I want to relate in this article as much as what has transpired in the last five years that tried to interfere with John's desire for diving.
In mid 2015 John was diagnosed with Bladder Cancer and had to go through 16 sessions of chemo, which, by all indications, killed the cancer. Great you say, but the doctor recommended he have his bladder removed to avoid any reoccurrence of the cancer somewhere else in his body.
As a result of having his bladder removed it was necessary for John to be fitted for a Urostomy Pouch that would be positioned on the outside of his body. Now John had a dilemma which was could he get back into diving with this appendage.
John checked with various doctors along with contacting DAN but no one could say for sure if he could dive. Taking it upon himself, John went to a local dive shop, who had a pool, and asked if he could do a check-out dive with the pouch and it proved to be a success.
As a result of learning he could dive with the pouch, John began diving again and chalked up 57 dives from February of 2016 to April of 2017.
Shortly after this the Florida group contacted John to see if he was up to getting together for a week long dive on the Aquacat live aboard. He jumped at the invitation and in May of 2017 we all boarded the boat in Nassau and headed down into the Eleutheras.
John with the Aquacat in the background
For the next five days we had a ball wreck diving, shark feeding, night diving not to mention the Washing Machine. It was a great trip. The boat provided the opportunity to make 25 dives at various locations and John was the only diver on board that dove every one of them. He was awarded a certificate by the crew to acknowledge this feat.
GARY GEORGE WALT JOHN
We really had to give John credit for turning his adversity into not only a positive outlook but a physical determination to carry out his desire to continue exploring beneath the surface.
Fast forward to 2020 where for the first half of the year some of his blood numbers were extremely low to the effect that his Oncologist forbid John to go diving but John actually went back before he got the OK. He had been out of the water for 5 months and as John put it “My gills were drying out…….I couldn’t help it”.
John didn’t really get the OK to go diving until September of 2020 and he finished 2020 with 32 more dives in his log which brings us back to that New Years Eve dive where he celebrated ending the year in the cold confines of that quarry.
The doctors may feel John should hang up his fins and his blood work confirms it but John is under water and can’t hear them because he can probably get in 40 to 50 more dives before they find out for it’s hard to get John DOWN about his condition or UP from his diving.
Good luck John, we love you!
George