BARRIE'S STORY - An acoustic Neuroma patient

12. SWIMMING EXERCISES

Another area that I wanted to pursue was to get back to the swimming pool and I hoped that water based exercises would improve my balance and walking. Unfortunately my first experience of a swimming pool was a visit to a private pool with terrible acoustics and this really put me off. At the time I found the noise too oppressive so I did not rush back to swimming.

I enrolled at a hydrotherapy pool where I had access initially to a physiotherapist and I started undertaking exercises each week. Although it was only a small pool I found I could do a few strokes along the length of the pool, which showed me that I could still swim. Initially my balance was simply nonexistent in water and I realised that I would have to relearn how to balance and walk in water. I continued exercising in the Hydrotherapy Pool for over 8 months.

The next stage occurred when we were on holiday abroad in February 2003, nearly 12 months after the operation. In an outdoor pool I started swimming again and by the end of the week could swim 12 lengths at a session. I had to take care of my closed eye, so I wore goggles and have continued to wear them. To try and minimise the time my eyes are under water I have swum breaststroke and continued only swimming breaststroke ever since.

On returning from the holiday, I made my first tentative steps to swimming in our local municipal pool. I slowly built up my swimming sessions to 24 lengths of the pool. I found that my technique was somewhat frantic and not the smooth controlled swimming I used to do before my operation. Over time this has slowly improved as my confidence has increased. I did notice that initially I had difficulty controlling my breathing correctly while swimming. Like many things, I had to 'relearn' how to control my breath and with my facial palsy problems I took in a lot of water during my early sessions.

By June 2003 I started to increase the number of lengths to 32 per session, which is effectively ½ mile. As my stamina and technique have improved my speed has increased but I still cannot swim as fast as I could before the operation. I now swim two or three times per week and intend to keep this going in the long term.