The chronic pain from his spinal cord injury is constant. After his injury and subsequent rehabilitation, Air Force Pilot Ian James Brown had to make the choice to take medication for the pain or to tough it out. Ian chose the latter. His reasoning was that medication might mask pain that could be indicating a different problem in his body. He didn’t want that and chose to live with the chronic pain.
I met Ian around 2010 at a pool in New Jersey when I was conducting a Diveheart adaptive pool program with a local dive club. He thought scuba diving was lost to him. He was a military rescue diver, so when he discovered that he could get back in the water again with Diveheart, he jumped at the opportunity.
It was like riding a bike for him. With a little adaptation, he was flying around the pool swimming with his long strong arms.
Thanks to a grant from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Ian was able to join Diveheart on an adaptive scuba trip in 2013 to Cozumel, Mexico. Over the years he joined us on a couple more trips with other Veterans with disabilities to the Florida Keys. Ian had become an accomplished adaptive diver and after medical school, an accomplished physician.
This May was the third year in a row that Mayo Clinic asked Diveheart to present at their annual medical conference in Cozumel. It immediately occurred to me that it would be cool for Doctor Ian Brown to join Diveheart and help us present on the benefits of scuba therapy to the Mayo doctors attending the conference. Ian eagerly accepted the invitation.
I thought this is a very special moment that I wanted to capture so I invited award-winning film maker David Marsh on the trip. David not only captured our two-day presentation with Ian, but he did seven additional video profiles on Diveheart adaptive divers including Doctor Ian James Brown.
The Mayo physicians were so impressed with Ian that they went way over his allotted presentation time to ask questions after he shared his personal case study about how Diveheart and scuba therapy not only helped eliminate his pain during a scuba trip, but helped keep the chronic pain away for up to two weeks after the trip. Ian’s story and other inspiring stories of hope and healing can be found on the Diveheart YouTube channel.
