For those who are not familiar with SCUBA, it is an abbreviation for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. It has enabled millions of divers to explore underwater for an extended period of time, and I’m one of them. Well, I used to be one of them, because I have not done any SCUBA diving for more than 20 years.
I dream of SCUBA diving again in the future. I tried to do such an activity when my family and I were visiting the Cayman Islands in April 2015, but SCUBA masters at our hotel told me that I must have some retraining before that, because I had (and still have) not done any SCUBA diving for more than 20 years. Instead, my family and I went snorkeling, which was a fun family event in any case.
The question is, why would I bring up SCUBA in this type of blog site? It contributes to my resistance to having a cochlear implant of my own. With such a device, one may not be able to dive as deep as one could without it. The deepest I had gone was 75 feet below sea level, and that took place in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. That was a time when cochlear implants were crude devices, as compared to current ones. I even wasn’t aware of those devices at that time.
Prior to my study abroad at the West Indies Laboratory in St. Croix during the summer of 1985 (just before my senior year at Harvard), I learned SCUBA diving. The course I took there was Ecology of Coral Reefs, and it fulfilled one of the requirements for my B.A. in biology. I dove there almost every day for five weeks, and these were marvelous times.
I dove again in Jamaica in the spring of 1987. I won a trip there during a raffle dance at my old college dormitory, Lowell House, and took my old college roommate Will there for a few days.
I dove in Hawaii when I was on my honeymoon with my bride Denise in November 1994. By then, I was already aware of cochlear implants, because my peers at UPenn and at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute (KHRI) at the University of Michigan were quite knowledgeable on cochlear implantation. I graduated from UPenn in late 1993 and had been working as a postdoctoral fellow at KHRI for over a year before Denise’s and my wedding.
I dove in Cancun when Denise and I vacationed briefly there in January 1997. That was the last time I went SCUBA diving.
Would a cochlear implant permit me to do SCUBA diving during those times? Nope. It’s because as one dives deeper, one would be under a greater volume of water. This would put greater pressure on the diver’s body, including his or her cochlear implant. The body could adapt to the greater weight of water to a point, but the cochlear implant couldn’t. It was a delicate and complex device. So, the deeper one would dive, the greater risk it would be to the cochlear implant — a breakage of such a device could lead to health complications, followed by medical intervention. Right now, cochlear implant technology has improved so much that it has enabled current CI wearers to go SCUBA diving, maybe up to 25 meters, which is equivalent to 82 feet. But I’m talking about more than 20 years ago, and I wouldn’t be able to go that deep (e.g., 50-75 feet below sea level) with such a device.
Many of you, especially those with typical hearing and those who haven’t done any SCUBA diving, would have never understood why I was so hesitant to wear a cochlear implant. It’s because I had so much fun doing SCUBA diving. As I became a more experienced SCUBA diver, I learned more about cochlear implants, and said to myself, Naah, I’m not wearing such a device, because I fear it’d limit, or even forbid, my future SCUBA diving activities.
At present, whenever I see a cochlear implant representative at a professional conference, I’d often ask him or her about the effects of current cochlear implants on SCUBA diving. He or she would say, no problem, but I would never feel fully convinced by or comfortable accepting his or her word.
There are so many unknowns and so many wonders one has yet to witness in any body of water. I experienced some of them in only a few places, and I want to experience more of them in the future. But, as one can see, I’m getting older, and it might be a bit more difficult for me to adapt to newer versions of SCUBA diving. These factors might encourage me to think a bit more about having a cochlear implant myself.
Naaah, not so fast, buddy. I’m still 57 years young.