No Diving for Cam

I put two and two together the moment our prospective instructor handed us the medical checklist for diving. I didn't even have to read the checklist - I knew Pneumothorax would be on there. Sure enough, it was fourth on the list. This killed my hopes for getting my PADI certification here on Roatán, or anywhere for that matter.

A pneumothorax is a collapsed lung. I suffered one about four years ago, when my right lung half-collapsed. Needless to say, the rest of the run that day did not go so well. Actually, in the weeks following, I was unable to climb a flight of stairs in under a minute.

I could find a doctor on the island, and I could get clearance I suppose, but a bit of research on the Internet laid out some very dire consequences of diving with a risk of recurrence. So now, I am sitting across from one of about twenty dive docks, sipping on a coffee, watching boatload after boatload of people cart wetsuits, tanks, and gear across the street and launch into another day's adventures. Diving is what you do here - to such an extent that I can see four buoys, each marking a world-class dive site not 250m offshore.

On the bright side, snorkeling here is just as good. I was out this morning to swim (and salt water buoyancy makes you feel like the Thorpedo), and I saw hundreds of fish, and even a couple of squid. I am also going to meet up with Sofie from Denmark, who I met on the San Pedro hike. She has quite a fear of fish, so there is at least one more person on the island who isn't diving.