Leaving Saba was hard.
I got all sentimental on the plane to St. Maarten, and when Jo & Frank was waving their goodbyes as the plane left the runway tears came pouring down my face. I honestly think one of the hardest parts of this Scholarship is that every place you visit, you stay there just long enough to get to know, appreciate and love the people – and then you leave. Luckily, you are always arriving somewhere nice and that keeps your mind occupied with other things than missing what you have left. Though, it is important to remember them.
Visiting Divers Alert Network (DAN) was amazing. The president and vice-president, Dan and Betty Orr, met me at the airport with their other house guest for the week – Sarah Brightman. She is the Boston Sea Rovers Frank Scalli Summer intern, and we were about to have a fantastic week together.
On the airport:
Most people only know DAN through the insurance part, which is sad because they do a lot of important work beyond that. They have both medical, research, education and development sections at their headquarters, which are actually DAN´s primary focus. It all started in 1980 with a single telephone service at Peter Bennett´s desk at Duke University, because the Air Force and Navy were getting pretty tired of answering phone calls from people wondering where the nearest recompression chamber was. It quickly developed into a steadily growing organization, and to motivate the employees, the current president challenged them. If they got the organization to reach 250.000 members – he would shave his head. And he did! (I wish I had a picture of it).
I do have a picture showing me enjoying myself at DAN:
Sarah, me and the OW-USS DAN intern for the summer, James Cotton (also called Jimmie-James) started our training the next day. We had a series of lectures given by Nicholas Bird, Brian Harper and Marty McCafferty about different aspects of diving medicine, which were really good. Patty Seery and Scott Smith were the instructors on our Diving Emergency Management Provider-course, and we had so much fun examining each other and patching imaginary wounds caused by jellyfish stings, octopus bites and sea urchin spikes. After working hours each of the departments would take us out to dinner. This way we really got to know the people there – and they are without doubt awesome. Thank you guys for making our stay unforgettable!
During our week there we also got the grand tour at Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology. Mike Natoli showed us around and told us about all the interesting research they´re doing there. The facility is actually a hypo-hyperbaric complex – and they work on research projects concerning both divers, pilots and astronauts (cool, eh?). We even got to ask important questions we were pondering about, such as what they do with all the ”excrements” the research subjects produce during long hours in a chamber. We suggested it was produced in a bag, gift-wrapped and then sent through the airlock to the outside tenders. This, we learned, was not far from the truth. However, in some chambers they actually have a toilet! Like this one:
I even celebrated my 24th birthday in Durham – doing probably the most American thing you could possibly imagine. Yes. Going to a baseball game. In order to assmiliate as much as possible – we bought baseball caps and ate hot dogs and Cracker Jacks.
Thank you Dan & Betty for hosting me – it was a great experience and I really hope to see you again some time!
And, my military father´s wise words: Mission first, safety always.
