Swimming as therapy

I’ve always loved swimming. Ever since I learned at the age of around 9 or 10 I have enjoyed being in the water and losing myself in that warm wet environment. I do like the sea, but prefer to swim in a pool. It’s less salty and more controlled. I prefer swimming lengths to just bobbing around, though am happy to do the latter if I have the right people around me. I used to enjoy taking my son and his cousins, helping them learn to enjoy the water. Now though swimming is my solo pursuit.

After my surgery for breast cancer I had a very stiff right arm. I started to go to our local pool every week soon soon after finishing radiotherapy in January. Apart from the weeks of our summer holiday when I swam elsewhere I have been to the pool most weeks, sometimes twice.

Our local pool has roped off areas where you can swim most days, even when there are school lessons on. There’s a fast and medium lane. It’s irritating that some of the people in the medium should go in the fast, but a minor irritation. In the main it isn’t busy when I go at around 10am and so I can lose myself in the pool. I often have to remind myself to swim with my eyes open. I no longer count lengths but instead set the timer on my Fitbit.

In the pool I have thought out problems with my mum, written blog posts but more often cleared my jumbled mind of any thoughts.

Over time my stamina has increased along with my speed. The week before Christmas I was up to 40 minutes and 900 metres of breast stroke. Now, I’d like to add in some gym work. To actually work on my fitness.

Unfortunately though, I’ve had a little set back. Just before Christmas I fell and injured my knee. A crazy incident involving a disco, dancing and beer on the floor. Now, over a week later it is improving but today I discovered, painful when doing breast stroke. So I managed just a quarter of my usual distance in 30 mins. I also had to move into the general swimming area along with families etc. But I’m glad I went and that I got some exercise. I also planned out this post and the one on my other blog, so win win.

Next week I hope the knee will be better and I can get back into the swing of my therapeutic swim.

Some more benefits of swimming can be found here.

Photo by Ibrahim Mohamed on Unsplash