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%Begin Learning to Float Could Save Your Life Everyday Health MenuNewslettersSearch Multiple Sclerosis
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Because of the latter, I’ve been hearing a good few radio adverts from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) about water safety, particularly in cold water, as people head to beaches, lakes, and rivers to escape the heat. These heatwaves don’t hit us often — or for long enough to heat the water — here on our North Atlantic island, so the waters are usually pretty icy even on the hottest of summer days. Because of this, and the fact that for many aquatic revelers, it may be months since they were last in the water, the calls for caution begin just in advance of a forecast hot spell.
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How Swimming Advice Can Apply to MS
This year, as well as the normal annual warnings we hear on radio and television, I’ve heard some cold-water survival advice that seems equally prudent for those of us dealing with particularly difficult times with our multiple sclerosis (MS). “Float to Live” is this year’s lifesaving slogan, but it’s far more than a slogan.
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Its website advises, “If you found yourself struggling in the water unexpectedly, your instinct would tell you to swim hard. But cold-water shock could make you gasp uncontrollably.
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Then you could breathe in water and drown. Instead, you should Float to Live.”
The shock of an attack of MS symptoms, whether it’s the exacerbation that brings on diagnosis or a sudden worsening of symptoms years (or decades) after you thought you were “used to” MS, can also have many people — myself included — gasping uncontrollably and flailing about.
5 Steps to Survive Cold-Water Shock
The RNLI gives five steps to survive cold-water shock that also transfer well to the shock of MS: 1.
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Fight the instinct to thrash around. We all flail about when stunned by multiple sclerosis symptoms that hit out of seemingly nowhere. For the safety of ourselves and those around us, it’s important to fight this normal reaction so as not to be pulled under by the exhaustion of it all.
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2. Lean back.
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Our bodies and spirts have built-in buoyancy to situations like this if we just give our internal physics (and psyche) the chance to work for us rather than railing at the injustice of it all. 3.
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Gently move your limbs to help you float if needed. Sometimes the weight of it all can be too much for even the strongest and most buoyant of spirits.
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Use your extensions — those closest to you — to keep you floating until the brunt of the ordeal has passed or, at least, until you’ve regained a level of control. 4. Float until you can control your breathing.
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Until you have your breath (and panic and thoughts and worry, and, and, and … ) under some level of control, you’ll not be able to move from panic or survival mode to figuring your way through the long swim that is ahead of you. For some, particularly those already used to these sudden splashes of our disease, this floating is only a matter of a few hours or even minutes. For others, learning to float can take days or months (or in the case of this writer upon diagnosis, years … )
5.
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Call for help. In the case of cold-water shock, you call for help only when you are calm and have passed the fight-or-flight reaction.
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While that’s not always possible with an MS attack, it’s good to be in as calm a state as possible so you can direct the help required rather than send family and friends (and medical professionals) scrambling here and there trying to help. If we can achieve the mental acuity to understand when we have been plunged into the depths of an unfamiliar (and often frightening) MS “thing,” these five steps, designed to save lives at sea, can be almost as important for us. Wishing you and your family the best of health.
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Cheers,
TrevisMy book, Chef Interrupted, is available on Amazon. Follow me on the Life With MS Facebook page and on Twitter, and read more on Life With Multiple Sclerosis. Important: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not Everyday Health.See More
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