The moment I almost died this year...

[Johnnyhinbos]

Note: Only space related in the periphery.

As the Dive Safety Officer for the New England Aquarium, and an electrical engineer, and an adventurer, and a total space geek, I was thrilled when I was presented with the opportunity this past July to both take astronaut Suni Williams for a dive in our Giant Ocean Tank AND do a joint presentation with spacesuit engineer Su Curley on modern personal LSS and compare underwater and space technologies for personal life support - me with my closed circuit rebreather tech and Su with her spacesuit.

Well, I _was_ supposed to do that. Unfortunately the reality was that a week before I was supposed to meet with the NASA folks I was down in north central Florida doing some joint training on my rebreather in the cave systems there and on July 4th I got severely bent - decompression sickness. I ended up being transported to South Georgia where I spent five days cycling between the ICU and the hyperbaric chamber. My wife had to fly down from Boston and drive me the 1,300 miles home and it took more than six weeks of recovery and it'll be six months before I can get back in the water. AND I just had a heart procedure to close a PFO that was causing the issue in the first place.

Needless to say, I missed out on the NASA bit, but they did text me the attached photo with 'Larry' the spacesuit holding my novel, Out of Hell's Kitchen, outside my office. (Note - this does not imply that NASA is endorsing my book!) I thought that was pretty nice.

Anyway - for anyone interested in what it's like to get bent, I recently gave a presentation to the staff at the Aquarium on my experience and it can be watched here:

http://johnhanzl.com/2015/10/29/my-personal-experience-with-getting-the-bends-hint-it-sucks/

There is direct correlation with my more extreme diving with respect to inert gas loading and O2 toxicity as it relates to space.

Finally, if you're ever bored you can check out a talk I did on a far more dangerous dive, known as the Mount Everest of scuba diving, the Andrea Doria. Sadly since I dove this wreck in '09, two more divers have perished on the wreck.

http://johnhanzl.com/2014/03/06/diving-the-andrea-doria/

I am working on reconnecting with Su and setting something up in the future once I'm cleared to dive. Any questions welcome...

John Hanzl
author, action / adventure
www.johnhanzl.com

[MattMason]

Glad that you're back to fighting form, John. Congrats on your book and good luck!