On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:00:54 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 11 Jun 2008 13:21:21 -0400, Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> 
> 
>>LOL, that's a good one.  In the lifesaving course I took, we had to
>>recover from being in a canoe that was overturned while fully clothed.
>>Treading water is a bit more difficult because of the additional weight,
>>but you can fashion a very good floatation device out of a shirt or a
>>pair of pants if the fabric is kept wet.
>>
> In my "saving your own life" course, we were told. No swimming. Keep
> your legs together and your arms tucked into your armpits. That's to
> minimise heat loss. Of course we were talking about the Northern North
> Sea where the sea temperatures reach about 11.5 C or 53 F in summer.

Yeah, that would be a bit different.  We focused more on boating safety, 
but I grew up in Minnesota, so there were some caveats if you fell 
through the ice in the winter or something like that.  Frostbite can be a 
real bitch (one kid and a teacher at my stepson's former school had to 
have digits amputated because of frostbite on a school trip).

>>Ouch.  I do occasionally have trouble with my hearing.  They did a graft
>>(so I can honestly say "sorry, I can't hear you - I've got a leg in my
>>ear!" - the skin used in the graft came from my left thigh, as I
>>recall).  The doctors were fairly amazed, though, that I didn't test
>>with any degredation in my hearing.
>>
> I lost some of mine with high noise levels, pardon? :)

I do notice now that I have a harder time hearing than I used to.  
Ambient noise really kills my ability to listen to anything specific - TV 
on in the other room while I'm talking to someone (or having people 
talking in the next room while I'm watching TV, but not as much) can make 
it difficult for me to hear.  It may not be hearing specifically but also 
an inability to focus caused by too many distractions - not sure on that.

>>But my advice regarding perforating an eardrum and then continuing to
>>swim:  Don't.  It is without a doubt the single most painful thing that
>>has ever happened to me.  I've broken bones (my wrist and my leg, both
>>once), but chlorinated water on the auditory nerve far, far outstrips
>>the pain of breaking a bone.
> 
> I've heard that <g>

Terrible pun.  Just sayin'. ;-)

Jim

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