Get Bent
How a dive injury led me down the path to write and illustrate children’s books
So… This story starts with water. My love of the water comes from my dad. He was a lifeguard at Jones Beach on Long Island for 13 years, and well — I think that after my brother and I were born, he placed us right in the ocean. (tho also pretty sure our mom would have killed him on the spot if he tried, maybe with a trident) We spent part of every summer on Long Beach Island, NJ at my Grandmother’s house on the beach. It was our collective love for the ocean and a trip for us to have a dive adventure together that ended my diving career and, in a way, gave birth to me writing children’s books.
I am super psyched to go diving in a cold and murky Virginia quarry.
I used to be an avid diver. What started in a cold and low visibility Virginia quarry took me to some interesting places. My brother and I traveled a bit around the Caribbean and the Philippines (where 1/2 of April’s—my wife— family is from) and fell in love with everything about the experience. Diving was awesome, but experiencing new places and cultures was equally bad ass. Every six months or so we’d pick a new spot and do some diving.
We decided to travel to Bonaire, due to the ability to shore dive. We stayed at a great resort and had an awesome week of diving. My wife, pregnant with our first child (a girl! now 4 & 1/2!), stayed back in Virginia. Diving there is not done via boat — you rent a truck and pick up tanks in the morning, then head out to dive. It’s pretty bad ass, drive around, find your spot, park, swim out to the reef, then dive. We dove pretty conservatively all week and would wrap up each day with a night dive to hangout with some big ass tarpon. It was amazing.
View from the resort we stayed at on Bonaire. Above the water, much of the island is not that pretty. It gets much more beautiful under water.
I started having pins-and-needles in my arms and legs.
After our final dive of the week, we went out to dinner with our parents — the plan was to take mom shopping the next day. A few hours after a really good meal, something felt off. I started having pins-and-needles in my arms and legs. I knew this was a symptom of DCS (the Bends) but — shit — I dove within safe profiles all week. I tried to get some sleep, tossed and turned for a few hours, but the feeling did not change. Foolishly, I waited to the morning to go to the hospital, Hospitaal San Francisco (I was in a bit of denial, the true first stage of the bends). Once I got there I found out the Doctor was not due in for 2 hours and the nurse thought I was having a reaction to a jellyfish encounter. I passed the time watching iguanas run around the facility.
So… I was feeling relieved. It was a fucking jellyfish. Goddamn right it was — we dove safely, made sure there was more than adequate surface time between dives, drank a bunch of water and had safety stops at the end of each dive. We did not go deeper than 80 feet — and no one else was hurt!
Then the doctor got there. Then I had to do a bunch of neurological tests after I told him my symptoms. Then reality sunk in. English was his 2nd or 3rd language and I’m a shitty one-language American that was scared out of his pants, so communication was not stellar at this point. After a few neurological tests there are a flurry of phone calls + an IV and the realization that I was taking a US Navy Table 6 chamber ride. I had been diagnosed with neurological Decompression Sickness or DCS, which according to DAN (and I guess, my blood) is:
‘Bubbles forming in or near joints are the presumed cause of the joint pain of a classical “bend.” When high levels of bubbles occur, complex reactions can take place in the body, usually in the spinal cord or brain. Numbness, paralysis and disorders of higher cerebral function may result. If great amounts of decompression are missed and large numbers of bubbles enter the venous bloodstream, congestive symptoms in the lung and circulatory shock can then occur.’
In some cases of neurological DCS, there may be permanent damage to the spinal cord, which may or may not cause symptoms. However, this type of damage may decrease the likelihood of recovery from a subsequent bout of DCS.
So, I was scared, really really scared. I then walked, with my IV stand, across a dirt road to a warehouse that housed the recompression chamber. By this time my brother had grabbed our parents (we did not want them to freak) and they were there as I stepped into the airlock of a really old hyperbaric chamber with a male nurse to join me for my 7 hour journey. Related, I hate—really fucking hate—tight spaces, and the chamber was… cozy. We started at sea level and dropped down to the equivalent of 60 feet below the surface, then back up to sea level over those 7 hours. For 15 minutes I would wear a mask breathing almost pure O2 then 5 minutes of air. Rinse and repeat. This is done to offload the excess nitrogen gas in your body.
Treatment involves compression to a treatment depth, usually 60 feet, and breathing high oxygen fraction gases at an oxygen partial pressure of between 2.8 ata (atmospheres) and 3.0 ata. Delays in seeking treatment have a higher risk of residual symptoms; over time, the initially reversible damage may become permanent.
I got out of the chamber after 7 long hours. They kept the IV catheter in my hand incase I needed a second chamber ride the next day. I went to the resort and finally called my wife, who was less than thrilled about what I was telling her. We grabbed dinner, I slept and went back to the hospital the next day. My symptoms were clear — I could go home in 4 days, which turned into seven due to flight availability. I had DAN (Divers Alert Network) insurance that covered everything. THEY ARE HELPFUL AND AMAZING. If you dive, you need this.
I missed the doctor’s appointment where my
wife found out we were having a baby girl.
Once I was home, to my wife’s dismay, I was determined to dive again. I had to get cleared by a doctor to dive again. I went, got cleared, but his answer to my main question gave me pause:
Q: What are the chances this happens again?
A: I can’t tell you that.
I can’t tell you that. Well, that planted a seed of doubt in my head. I dove a handful times after my injury, but it was not the same. I was scared. Not of diving, that was still the most peaceful thing I have ever done. I was scared of the bubbles that could be in my blood. Diving became a thing to prove that I was ok… and I wasn’t and I am still not.
The first thing people ask you after you tell them you have had the bends is: What did you do wrong? or How fast did you come up? HOW DID YOU FUCK UP? There is a stigma to getting injured. Divers look at you as unsafe or reckless. There is a bit of shame that you suffered an injury as well. Somehow, I must have done something to cause this—it’s my fault. To this day, I can only guess as to why I was hurt. My brother and dad dove the same dives and more than I did and they were fine…
It was another dive injury that caused
me to stop diving altogether.
The injury did not occur to me, but to the husband of a friend of my wife. He had the same type of DCS injury that I did. There was one major difference, he was paralyzed from the chest down. I tried one last dive and lasted all of 15 minutes before I called the dive. My head was truly just not in it anymore and I was/am too damn scared. And I am ok with this.
So, what in the good name of fuck does this have to do with children’s books? Well, I had seen some amazing marine life on my dives. I had hoped to share the experience of diving with my daughter one day and… that was only going to happen with a mask, fins and snorkel or at an aquarium. Both of those are cool, just different than what I had been thinking.
First copy of Under the Sea with Me.
I had stopped painting for a few years and decided that I wanted to paint some of the marine life that I had seen to share with my daughter. I had an idea for a story about an Octopus that just never really got going. Then I had a rhyme that got stuck in my head: Under the sea with me, what do I see? My daughter was 3 and along with some brilliant and beautiful books, I was stuck reading some godawful ones to her. Inspiration struck and I decided to turn that rhyme into a book.
Under the sea with me, what do I see? A Hammerhead Shark!
I worked fast, maybe too fast (if you consider 2 years to get there fast), 15 paintings and rhymes done in 5 weeks. I think part of me secretly hoped this project would kill the dive demon that was locked in my head. That… did not occur. It did bring something else to life, though.
I paint, shockingly, in a bit of a strange fashion. It’s more process drawing than painting. I sketch in pencil, then redraw that sketch on dura-lar. Once the pencil drawing is done, I draw over that in oil stick. After that, I dilute acrylic paints and pour the pigment into sections of the drawing framed by the oil stick. Repeat the process until all the colors are laid down. Then sit and wait for it to dry. We don’t have space for a studio, so I appropriated a portion of the kitchen table.
The rhymes are pretty simple. At this point, all I try to do is describe the object I painted in a fun fashion. The writing is really geared to how old my daughter is. I *think* I’ll try more complex stories as she gets older. I also have a bunch of nsfw versions of the rhymes that end up being part of my writing process. No, I am not sharing them… for now.
Everything was going smooth, real smooth. Until the day I came home and saw blue paw prints going up the stairs (we have a Boston Terrier named Noche) Apparently she decided to hop up on the dining room table and have a sniff or a look at the painting, then ran upstairs. Was a good laugh… the next day.
I had help from a few awesome work colleagues (Niv Shah photographing the paintings and Ryan Gantz editing the rhymes) in turning this idea into a reality. Two weeks after I completed the indesign files, I had a copy of Under the Sea With Me in my hands.
During the day, I work at Vox Media, so — this is a 100% side gig for me. I did not want to try to go the traditional publishing route, shit, I really just wanted copies for my kid. So, I used Blurb and got some fancy hardcovers for my family. My wife told me it was silly to not publish, so I reformatted the book for CreateSpace and published to Amazon. The book sells a few copies a month — nothing amazing.
What was amazing was the look on my daughters face.
A book, made for her!
For about 2 days, I was good. I had an idea and executed against it. Then I realized I kinda liked working on that stuff late at night. I also knew that I had some other books up in my head that might need to see the light of day. Those books would have to wait. My tiny 4 year old editor that demanded the next book be about… THE COLOR PINK.
Oh god, how in the hell was I going to do that? Pink is just not my thing. While the first book took 5 weeks (plus 2 years), this book took about 6 months to complete. I had to do research and find things that were pink that folks would not expect. What’s Pink? follows the same call and response format of UTSWM. I had the help of April who co-authored the book, Niv, and Ryan again—without them—I would have never finished the book. I have a few more to do in this format before I try to be a real storyteller, but I think I’ll get there…
Sometimes the death of one hobby leads you to another.
