Swimming your way to Health and Happiness!

Swimming your way to health and happiness!

   I started swimming seriously after my quintuple bypass in 2004.  Various physicians and others suggested joining a cardiac exercise program at the hospital  and I did go once, but all those old puffing elderly folks who looked as though they were working so hard were so depressing that I decided not to go again.  If I was going to exercise on any sort of regular basis it was going to have be fun, not work.   I had always liked swimming and I was a fairly good swimmer in my time.  My first foray was almost the last.  I had decided to go to the university pool but when I got on campus I drove around for fifteen minutes and still hadn't found a place to park at any cost.  Students, I decided, must be much richer now than when I was a student.  I could always find a spot in those days, to park my bike.  I then decided if this was the way it was going to be, university was not for me!   I swung impatiently out of the gilded gates of academe and headed for the Aquatic Centre, an impressive Olympic dimensioned pool that had been built for some major event.  I had often driven by that interesting building but never actually had a look inside.   I drove straight there and was overjoyed to see a large parking lot with lots of space.  I parked my car, registered for a nominal fee and twelve years later I'm still going on a regular basis.  My objective was to swim three times a week and as the song goes "with a little help from my friends", I have been for the most part, successful.  Now everyone knows that even the best intentioned people tend to fall off the exercise wagon when left to themselves.  So I knew that I would have to devise a means to overcome the inevitable boredom of lane swimming for an hour three times a week.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the swimming itself. It is excellent exercise, in that one can fine tune the activities to one's individual  capabilities.  Unlike those activities that pound and stress one's knees, hips and lumbar spine, one can get as much exercise as one wants or can tolerate, without the side effects of those other activities. Still, it can get a little repetitious and even boring, although one certainly has an opportunity to reflect on everything from the meaning of life to the content of the next blog.

   I had only been attending for a short while, when I noticed that in a separate deep water diving pool set apart from the swimming lanes, there was music and activity directed by an enthusiastic and athletic young woman, demonstrating a series of exercises.  I had been lane swimming and was getting a bit bored, so I got out of the main pool and joined the twenty five or so women and two men in the exercise class.  This was quite good fun, following the graduated exercise instructions, watching the graceful young woman on the pool apron demonstrating the ballet- like moves and encouraging us old folks to build up a  head of steam.  They were not all old folks in the pool but the mean age would have been closer to my age than to the youngest participant's.   The other advantage to this particular activity is that in  the course of the exercising, one is in close enough proximity to people to talk to  them.   

   After a while I started to get to know a few interesting people.  Otto, an elderly widower, well in his eighties, would finish off his exercises by climbing a sheer 'climbing wall', probably twenty feet high.  It had foot and hand grips and was obviously there for the kids to climb and then push themselves away and drop into the pool.  Otto would precariously climb this and then drop into  the pool.  The whole thing looked so dangerous that the life guard told him not to do it.  He politely listened to the advice, nodding his  head sagely in agreement and then didn't do  it again until  the next day and the next and the next.  Eventually they closed it down when he was in  the vicinity.   He was disappointed but continued swimming.  'The swimming" he said, "is good for my body, but even more important for my mind."  I've thought about that a bit and I agree with him.

  One of my closest friend now is an ex cop, who is even more talkative than me.  We started having a coffee at the Tim Horton's just across from the pool, where we continue regale each other with stories from our respective professions.  We call our dialogues, 'The Doc and the Cop' stories. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.   
   Early on, I ran into a lady who had been the chief radiology technician in a hospital in  Ontario.  We found a lot to talk about while in the exercise group.  It turned out that her son is a local  Ear, Nose and Throat  specialist to whom I referred patients when I was in practice.  It is a small world.  I ran into this lady in a store some while ago.  Initially she didn't recognize me, but when she did, her rather loud exclamation was, "Oh, I didn't recognize you with your clothes on!!"  A few nearby shoppers pretended not to hear!
   These are but a few of the folks I have met at the pool.  I arrange to  meet with  the cop on a regular basis, so on those mornings I might  have stayed in bed or lazed around the house because it looked dreary, I can't, because I have an appointment and I always keep  my appointments, and on time!
You will get an occasional follow up of life in the pool!