Thirteen years ago today, I swam for the first time after my near fatal bike accident on Sept 18, 2010. All my life, I’ve been swimming. I don’t remember learning how, nor do I have any memories of water fear. In elementary school, my sister and I always spent the first day of summer at the Golf Manor pool. Every hour, we got out of the water and sat along the edge, kicking madly while lifeguards strolled behind us, pouring chlorine granules over our feet. Lord knows what the dust we inhaled was doing to our alveoli. Then when it was deemed safe again (no litmus paper testing yet), we’d jump back in and splash around, getting joyfully sunburnt.
When I was nine, we drove across the country to California. In Pasadena, we stayed with my father’s long-time friend, Stan Mikulka. In addition to Marineland and Disneyland, we spent afternoons in Stan’s pool, frolicking around with his kids who were about our age. 8mm movies from the time show me breast stroking around, smiling as I chased his brood.
A year later, our family joined the Indian Hill Club, a member of the local Private Pool Swim League. My father promised me a transistor radio if I joined the swim team. I discovered some competency swimming breast stroke, and adopted swimming as my sport after winning a clutch of red (2nd place) and white (3rd) ribbons. Starting freshman year of high school, I joined the team, and followed suit in college, again always a bridesmaid, never the winner in the swim meets. But I gained confidence, strength, and camaraderie, and kept swimming in my life after graduation.
Once I moved to Venice with Cheryl, we went to the Venice High School pool whenever we could, and kept the regime up after moving to the Pacific Northwest. It was a constant we did together, our thing. When I turned 50, and took up triathlon, that confidence served me well, as most amateur triathletes were even worse swimmers than I am.
I never gave my ability to swim a second thought, or even a first one. I was always able to jump in a pool any tine I wanted, and start swimming, better than most people struggling through the water. All those laps from age 11 to 20 had cemented the motor memory and built an unconscious feel for the water.
The bike accident put me in the ICU for 12 days, during which time I lost 15 pounds. An injury to my spinal cord reduced the strength in my arms and shoulders. I had to wear a neck brace for 6 weeks, and spent over a month with a feeding tube in my stomach because I couldn’t swallow safely. Once freed from the brace and tube, I accompanied Cheryl to the pool on Sunday. Instead of the lap pool, I gingerly entered the heated recreation pool, which features two 25 yard lanes.
I stood waist-deep in the 90F water, leaning on the edge for support. Cheryl smiled encouragingly from the deck.
“Well, here I go,” I mumbled, and dropped beneath the surface, pushing off the wall as I’d done countless times before. I pulled against the water, tried pushing it back behind me, and felt…nothing. No power, no grip, no kinesthetic feedback telling me I had moved myself forward. I let me feet drop, and walked slowly to the other end, wondering if, once I got there, I’d be able to make it back.
After resting at the wall – the simple act of walking through water had exhausted me – I pushed off once more. The push gained me about a yard of forward motion. That, plus my own body length, left me 22 yards to go, an impossible distance. The other end was beyond the horizon of my ability. I swam a slow motion breast stroke, instead of the crawl I’d tried before. This produced some forward progress, mainly from my frog kick.
Usually, I could reach the other end in 10 strokes. As I passed 15, and found myself still five yards from the end, I dropped my feet once more. I slouched to the deck, and draped my arms over the concrete coping, my chest beginning to heave in concert with the tears welling in my eyes. I looked up at Cheryl, her smile jubilant.
“You did it!” she encouraged.
I tried to find a complementary feeling of satisfaction, but only saw a dark chasm where my swimming prowess once had been.
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A radical prostatectomy for cancer is notorious for its impact on genito-urinary functions. Without that gland, and other plumbing bits removed, urine drips, flows, or even gushes easily from the bladder. The nerves which stimulate erection are shocked into somnolence. Months, if not years, of rehabilitation can sometimes help, but a return to normal function is not guaranteed.
I myself with exercises and tools to re-awaken my equipment. Improving bladder function took about 3 months, with constant forward progress to reward my efforts.
Sex was another matter. In medical school, I learned that separate nerve pathways control erection and ejaculation/orgasm. I also learned that men with a severed spinal cord can still make sperm, and ejaculate them during sex, despite being unable to create much less sustain an erection.
I began working on both processes. Within several weeks of the surgery, I successfully induced orgasm and the feeling of ejaculation with manual stimulation. This produced not only the usual pleasure, but also a meta-pleasure, that I was not totally broken, that I could enjoy some semblance of a sex life. The trick would be integrating it into my relationship with Cheryl.
Breaking it down, I hoped to reawaken my ability to become erect, penetrate, and produce an orgasm. Up until my surgery, I had taken this all for granted, the anatomic, circulatory, hormonal, emotional, and neurological components involved. But as with swimming, I had always been able to perform, so never gave the details, much less the possible loss, any thought. Now I would have to break down that process, rebuild the components, and eventually put them together.
This also resembled what I had done with swimming, thirteen years before. I had to regain strength in my limbs. I had to figure out a way to grip the water having lost the use of several muscles in my right hand and forearm. (My right little finger would flop around while I pulled the hand through water; the angle of that hand would not stay perpendicular to the direction of my forward motion.) I literally retaught myself how to swim using my new body. Over the next year, I was successful enough to return to Ironman Arizona and once again win my age group. But I lost about 10% of my speed in the process – my times for swimming meters became the same as my time for swimming the equivalent number of yards had been.
It’s taken years for my brain and sense of self to adjust, but I no longer think about whether, or how I swim. I simply jump in and do it, a bit differently than before.
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I have gathered many tools and resources to help me on this journey. First among them is the love and tolerance of Cheryl. She has said two things which have sustained me. First, when deciding on treatment, she stated, “What I care about most is your survival.” Our new sex life would be what it would be, and she knew we would come to that the way we have approached everything – together. And, she acknowledged she did have an interest in the return, in some form, of that sex life: “It’s my penis, too!” Next, I found research studies and other resources which detailed specific ways to perform the required rehabilitation. Viagra, a vacuum erection device, Kegel’s exercises, a vibratory sex toy have all been essential. Finally, seeking out other men who have gone or are going through the same recovery journey has provided and emotional ecosystem in which to attempt and persist in my rehab.
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Over the last seven months, I have worked on re-building my sex life, usually alone, at times with Cheryl. Viagra daily for the first six months helped neurochemical function in my penis. Five to ten minutes most days with the Vacurect pulled blood into the vessels essential for engorgement and erection so they did not atrophy. Stimulating orgasm in my flaccid penis helped keep the re-growing nerves regain their function. And playing in bed with Cheryl kept our tenderness towards each other alive. We used the drugs, the pump, the toy, and while penetration was possible, I could not link in the orgasm. It was too much like work, too artificial, not the playful fun it once had been.
At my six month check-up with the surgeon, we discussed this a bit. I told him I still had not “put it all together”. We talked a bit about using penile injections to reliably produce an erection, to get us over the hump, so to speak. I said, no, I want to wait nine months after the surgery for that. I wanted to try and reconstitute what had once been unconscious, so natural, naturally.
On Saturday, 30 weeks after the surgery, I popped a Viagra and 90 minutes later, we went to bed. No toys this time, just our skin and our hands and our love. An explosion shot from my inner thighs up through my face and head. I cried out in joy, as happy as I’d ever been.
I have a photograph of me crossing the line in Tempe, finishing that comeback Ironman victory, 14 months after the accident which almost ended my life. An ecstatic smile fills my face, my arms pointing skyward. I found what I had been looking for, and knew the future would once again reward me.