Sometimes in life we get a little nudge, just to make us appreciate what we really have. It is very easy to become blasé… and we all know the classic saying “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”.

This summer ended up being that bit of a “nudge”. I had been working hard since January, and was in all honesty a little tired. Maybe even in need of a little break. Well in July I got that break… I fractured my foot putting me high and dry, out of the water for a whole three months of my life. Now if I had been doing something dangerous, or foolish at the time I could have understood, but no, I just stepped down a step, went over on my ankle and heard a pretty clear “Crack!” sound. Oops… of course I then went on to continue my day’s work (guiding a group of newly certified divers) trying to convince myself of every other possible reason that could have caused that ominous cracking sound. Well I had been able to wiggle my toes, so had assumed that it surely couldn’t be broken.

By lunchtime I knew something was really very wrong with my poor little foot, so there were no more dives for me that day, and it didn’t take much persuasion for me to pop along to the local hospital just to get things checked out.

Within ten minutes of our arrival in our local “Pyramid Hospital” here in Sharm el Sheikh, I had been seen by a doctor, x-rayed, and was being wheeled back to the entrance with my x-ray in hand, displaying a rather obvious fracture to my fifth metatarsal.

So… that was  going to put me out of the water for a bit.  Within the hour I had been whisked off to another room, and wrapped in a plaster cast from my knee down! Somewhat dramatic I felt. I was to wear the cast for a month and come back in three weeks for an x-ray, and crutches could be purchased from the chemist down the road.

“Crutches??! Oh my god, this is actually a bit serious. Time to head to the pub to find friends and comfort”

Well as it happened it was a bit serious, and I had plenty of time to contemplate my predicament, being completely out of action for a while. Thankfully after a couple of weeks, they replaced the ton weight plaster cast (which of course by now was covered in signatures and cartoon sketches… including my own DiveBunnie… quite an achievement considering I had to draw upside down.)

For a week or so, I then wore a light fibre glass cast, followed by a brand new funky air cast (moon boot, more like) brought out from the UK by my brother. This allowed me to gently start to weight bear as well as restore some movement in my ankle.

I was shocked by how much my calf had disappeared. The funniest moment was when I got out of bed in a semi dream, suddenly forgetting about my foot, went to stand on it, and ended up in a heap on the floor.  There was simply no muscle left to support me.

“Wow this is going to take some rebuilding.”

Over the weeks I had become pretty adept at maneuvering myself around the apartment on crutches, not easy when you want a cup of tea in front of the TV and both hands are busy holding crutches as you walk.

“Hmmm… challenging”

The day I was able to go down to one crutch now and again, was a total joy. Being able to carry things in my now free hand was such a treat. I  did say this story was all about appreciating the little things in life right?

Well it was at the six week mark that I was able to ditch the crutches altogether.

Thankfully I had a fellow DiveBunnie friend Kim in the UK who works in a hospital, so every x-ray taken here was quickly snapped, uploaded, and emailed off to her for a second opinion. And I will say that the orthopedic surgeons in London confirmed every single suggestion and diagnosis made here in Egypt. Quite reassuring when you are a few thousand miles away from home. The wonders of modern technology.

Now I could hobble around a bit more, I was able to show my face a little at the dive centre and feel a part of the team once more. I could even take off the cast and take a dip to cool off. It wasn’t long before I was swimming and wait for it, after a couple of months out came the fins for some snorkeling. Oh the joy of being able to float on the water again and feel that weightlessness for a while!

Well my summer was spent pretty much on the couch. I did a little work at the centre and spent lots of time on the internet.  I must admit it was not the best existence, especially with it being summer here, when the diving is spectacular and temperatures soaring. Usually the best way to be relieved from the heat is to jump in for a dive. With the air furnace  at forty degrees centigrade on some days, the thirty degree water feels comparatively refreshing. I was resigned to a life in the air conditioning.

When I started to feel hopeful of a return to diving, I popped along to our re compression chamber to have a chat with Dr Adel Taher our dive specialist in the hope that he would give me the all clear to get back in the water. Bad news… not yet.

“Noooo!” He went on to explain that when every day we inevitably end up with micro bubbles in our system. These are tiny bubbles that don’t cause any decompression symptoms, and are not normally a problem. However they could potentially become an issue with an unhealed fracture. Baby new blood capillaries have formed to feed the new bone, and if the micro bubbles were to end up here they could block any further healing and result in future problems, or an actual bend. He did however allow me to tend a fellow diver entering the re compression chamber for a treatment, even letting me have an extra oxygen session at depth in the hope that the high partial pressure of oxygen would speed up the healing. It must have worked as it wasn’t long before I started to feel the deep ache that I had come to associate with healing. After a couple of days’ discomfort, I noticed a dramatic improvement.It was shortly after this point that I actually had a moment where I completely forgot that I had hurt my foot.

Finally on the 18th October I was allowed back in the water. So found myself on a boat with my hubby and a couple of other instructors. I was excited beyond belief, and maybe a teeny bit apprehensive. This had been the longest break in diving that I had had since becoming an instructor over five years ago, and I guess I was also a little worried that it would hurt my foot.Well I needn’t have worried at all. I snorkeled out on the surface, looking down into the beautiful blue and felt nothing but serenity. I was once again in my element.

As I dropped beneath the surface, at the risk of going all poetic on you, I felt the water enveloping and caressing me like a long lost friend. It was still an un-seasonal thirty degrees centigrade, so I was wearing a shortie wetsuit, and the sensation of water stroking my legs as I drifted down towards the sandy bottom felt fantastic. I hovered for a while fascinated once again by the thousands of teeny tiny fish milling around the little coral trees. I was limited to a shallow twelve meters, but to be honest, that was enough for me. The corals are at their best at this depth, with the sunlight pouring down lighting up all the colors of the rainbow.

We swam along the edge of the reef plateau and I was just loving the sensation of being weightless once more,  floating above the reef effortlessly. Ahh it was awesome.To be honest, I only saw a couple of notable things on the dive which were a weeny scorpion fish, the size of my little finger and a spotty flat worm, but even without those little creatures my dive would have been totally glorious.It was great just to be back under the water again. To be able to look up and see the reef mirrored in the gentle ripples above, to feel myself drift along in the gentle current as we made our way back to the boat, reminded me of what I had missed out on all summer. But more to the point, it reminded me of what we are blessed with here in Sharm. Not only do we have this beautiful reef, we have the opportunity to dive it all the year round, and I am one of the lucky ones who gets to do this for a living.

I am now back at work, although surprisingly still limited to how deep I can dive. Which is fifteen meters for another month. So I now count my blessings, am thankful for the lifestyle I have, am thankful for mother nature’s  wonderful healing powers, and thankful for the fact that I once again have a fully functional foot.

To follow Clare’s adventures in diving visit her blog at  http://www.divebunnie.com/

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