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On Life with One Hand by Keiron McCammon

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Archives for May 2008

Tri-Limb Triathlete

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OK, as if life wasn’t busy enough already I’ve decided to dedicate myself to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Team In Training and become a triathlete (figured since I’ve only got 3 limbs, being a triathlete was quite apt)!

Both Kerry and I have signed up to raise funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives and we plan to race in the Pacific Grove Triathalon this coming September.

Completing a triathlon will be quite a personal challenge for me since I haven’t been doing any real exercise since I lost my hand back in 2006 (plus swimming 1.5km, biking 40km, running 10km ain’t no walk in the park). Anyhow, this gives me the perfect excuse to get back in shape and re-build my left arm/shoulder and legs after my accident whilst completing this event in honor of all individuals who are battling blood cancers.

So if you’d like to support me in raising $3,300 to help advance LLS’s mission please check out my fundraising page (or Kerry’s fundraising page). If you’d just like to get a laugh at my expense then keep checking back here as I post my progress!

A reminder of what my arm & legs looked like a little after my accident:

A Breath Of Fresh Air

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Closed Circuit Rebreather
Closed Circuit Rebreather

While I was in Grand Cayman on vacation I took the chance to try out a closed circuit re-breather. This is different from normal open-circuit SCUBA gear in that you re-breath the same air.

I remember when these units first started to be available for recreational diving a good few years back, it always peaked my interest, so I couldn’t miss a chance to finally give one a go.

DiveTech run a re-breather experience course for an afternoon (highly recommend giving it a go if you get a chance), Steve Tippets ran the course, another Brit and really good instructor. To my surprise I didn’t get to try one in a pool, as I had expected, but I got to go on an actual shore dive with it. After spending a bit of time in the classroom on safety and dive theory we then got familiar with the re-breather. After some basic skill tests, to make sure I could operate everything with one hand,  we got kitted up for the dive.

We walked down the pier and climbed into the water, swam out a little way and then descended. That’s where the difference between normal diving hits you, the buoyancy control is very different – breathing no longer changes your buoyancy the same way it does with normal open-circuit gear. It’s not untypical for first timers to bounce around on the bottom or keep hitting the surface as they try to get accustomed to the re-breather. Fortunately, I bounced once, settled down and then got the hang of it…which meant we could then spend the whole time actually diving. The biggest difference you notice is how quite it is, with no bubbles escaping you can literally swim into the middle of a shoal of fish and have them swimming around you, normally your breathing would have scared them off.

The buoyancy control is quite different to normal diving, normally breathing out causes you to sink as you lose buoyancy, and breathing in causes you to rise. Well, with a re-breather it’s the opposite, although to a lesser degree. After a while you get use to it, but every now and then it catches you out as you try to breath out to stop rising, to only then rise further.

All in all great fun and many thanks to Steve. I might be back one of these days to take the full course.

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Rebreather Dive, a set on Flickr.

Shooting Of An i-Limb Hand

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iLimb Video Shoot
iLimb Video Shoot

I got a call from Rich Sire from Diablo P&O the other day asking if I’d be willing to be video’d using my i-Limb hand for a TouchBionics promo video.

I’ve been working with Rich to get a socket built for my i-Limb hand. We’re now on our third prototype and getting pretty close to ironing out all the kinks, I typically use it for half a day at a time and I’m getting reasonably proficient using the hand for everyday tasks…huge step up from my normal hook.

Given how much I like the hand I was quite happy to provide a testimonial, so I headed to Rich’s office Friday for the shoot. It was similar to the MSNBC shoot I did, just on a smaller scale and it only took half a day.

They basically wanted to first shoot a normal consultation between Rich and I and then they took my testimonial for the hand followed by some action shots of me using the hand to fill my water bottle, drive my car, carry a brief case and so on. All quite fun.

They should be using the material for a big conference TouchBionics is attending in Germany, I’m hoping to get a copy of the footage so I can post it online here.