Blog Posts - Books by Eric Douglas

Celebrating the last Chemo session

November 19, 2013 By Eric Douglas

Resplendent in her Wonder Woman t-shirt (complete with cape) and her Wonder Woman necklace, Jean Hanna Davis was celebrating her last chemotherapy session yesterday by playing a few songs on her guitar.

Of course, this was just the last planned chemo session. The chemicals will be doing their job in her body for up to two weeks, continuing to kill the cancer cells that grew in her chest. After that, there will be tests and examinations. And if this series of relatively mild chemotherapy didn’t do its job, there will be more treatments.

The last treatment comes with its own share of doubts and worries.

“My gut tells me everything is okay. But I’m not sure I trust my gut. This is the part where it gets scary, when you’re done with treatment. You start thinking of all the things that could be wrong. What if this “mild” form of chemo wasn’t enough. That’s where you just have to trust your doctors, trust they know what they are doing, and have done the most they could do in the best possible manner. This is part where I start getting scared. You’re no longer actively treating.”

“When you get done with this; that is always the weird thing. You get done with this and you are done. You generally can’t get by to see them. You develop such a close relationship with these people, and they become your friends, and then you are done and you don’t see them anymore and they move on to their next patients.”

Later Jean had the chance to ask two of her oncology nurses about their perspective on their patients and they both said, while they are told not to get attached to their patients, they still do and their patients remain in their prayers for a long time afterward. They often get updates on patients from the doctors.

Jean sang Circle, a song she wrote for her grandmother Geraldine Loyola Hanna as she was dying. “Grandmom” fought breast cancer the year Jean was born and Jean was named for her.

The second song she sang has become something of an anthem for breast cancer survivors. Melissa Etheridge, a breast cancer survivor herself, wrote the song “I Run for Life” about running to raise money, awareness and support for breast cancer research.

She also did a bonus song, just to have fun.

Jean hopes her story, in the form of these blog posts, and a book this spring, will help to inspire, encourage and entertain people dealing with cancer. She wants them to know that they are not alone and cancer is not something you have to let beat you.

Jean gave me access to each of her chemotherapy treatments while she worked to rid her body of cancer for a second time. I wrote a series of six blog posts, five during October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, about Jean’s experience and her thoughts on cancer.

You can see the entire series on the Breast Cancer Page in the non-fiction section of my website..

Making a Diveheart training program

November 18, 2013 By Eric Douglas

From 1998 to present day, I’ve developed adult education training programs, mostly for the recreational dive industry. I’ve participated in photo and video shoots, and written scripts to teach people to use everything from AEDs to Dry Suits and a lot of stuff in between. Working with Diveheart to produce training videos to teach Adaptive Dive Buddies and Adaptive Scuba Instructors how to work with divers with disabilities was definitely a new one for me, though.

Probably the most important skill a prospective Adaptive Dive Buddy learns is empathy. It takes an amazing amount of nerve for an adaptive diver to trust her Adaptive Dive Buddies to care for her underwater. Day-to-day, a person who uses a wheel chair might rely on others for help, but failure to receive that help does not result in the person drowning. Or suffering through the pain and trauma of a burst ear drum. Or any number of other potential problems.

The second most important skill is handling task loading and stress in the water. As an Adaptive Dive Buddy for a disabled diver, you have to be ready to take care of your own buoyancy and equalization, while handling buoyancy and equalization for the Adaptive Diver as well. With the Diveheart system, you’re never alone in the water with an Adaptive Diver, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be prepared for emergency situations.

To simulate the potential challenges Adaptive Dive Buddies will face, we filmed (above and below water) divers with blacked out masks or with their legs strapped together and their arms immobilized. There is nothing that will teach empathy more effectively than taking a diver underwater without any ability to swim, control his own situation or even pinch his own nose to equalize. Once you’ve lived through that once, you will forever have a healthy respect for what an Adaptive Diver does every dive.

To capture the video and still images we need for the manuals and online training, we brought in two industry experts. There is practically no one better at shooting video in the Florida Keys than Frazier Nivens. He has years and years of experience shooting in the local waters, equally distributed between shooting critters and divers. Ken Berry worked for 15 years as the Executive Producer at PADI and then a few years at DAN and now for himself at LivingWater Media. No one in the dive industry knows more about producing training videos and organizing divers to perform, and repeat, skills above and below water.

We shot video for a week in the Keys, including a day and a half on dive boats provided by DJ Wood at Rainbow Reef. The staff there was great and really in tune with the needs of Diveheart and Adaptive Divers. Every time you see three divers on the screen, there are at least five people in the water including the three divers, the director and the camera man. Often, there were seven or eight to make sure everything was done correctly and to capture behind the scenes photographs and video at the same time.

One of the most amazing parts of this process was that the on-camera divers were all volunteers. They were all Diveheart Instructors and Adaptive Dive Buddies who donated their time to polish up their skills at a dress-rehearsal and then even more time to spend time underwater being put through the proverbial dive-ringer to perform and repeat skills underwater. They had to do skills over and over, allowing the camera to capture “establishing shots” (wide angle) and then the same scene from medium and then close up to allow for “cut-aways”.

Often, when you are teaching, if you sit back and pay attention, you can get more than you give. This was one of those situations for me. I learned so much from the divers who gave their time to volunteer for this unique organization it was incredible. And I realize just how much every day.

This is the second of three blog posts about Diveheart and the development of a ground-breaking set of training materials to train adaptive divers and adaptive dive buddies and instructors to learn to scuba dive. The first installment Diveheart: Imagine the Possibilities (November 13), discussed the idea of taking Adaptive Divers diving. The third installment (November 25) will include lessons I’ve learned from working with Elliot and some of the Adaptive Divers I’ve met through Diveheart.

On November 25, I’ll also be releasing a new Jackson Pauley/Withrow Key short story with a character inspired by Diveheart. The story is called Caesar’s Gold..

Diveheart: Imagine the Possibilities

November 13, 2013 By Eric Douglas

Jim Elliott’s mantra is “Imagine the Possibilities.” He doesn’t just say it over and over, though. He lives it.

In 2001, Elliott founded Diveheart as a volunteer, nonprofit organization to help people with disabilities learn to scuba dive. Diveheart began in Chicago, but Elliott has taught classes in more than 200 cities in the United States and even more around the world. Diveheart has served as a conduit for thousands of people with disabilities to learn to dive, or divers and dive instructors to be adaptive dive buddies and instructors.

About a year ago, Elliott contacted me about creating new training materials for Diveheart Adaptive Scuba Instructors and Adaptive Dive Buddies to use to train Adaptive Divers. Adaptation is what it is all about. Adaptive Divers adapt to their individual situations and adapt standard scuba skills to their own abilities. If they can perform those standard skills with adaptations, they become certified scuba divers. If they need assistance with skills such as ear clearing, swimming or regulator recovery and clearing, for example, they will earn a Diveheart Adaptive Diver certification and will dive with two Adaptive Dive Buddies.

For Elliott, the magic comes when he takes someone from their wheelchair and gets them in the water. It doesn’t have to be an amazing reef or some mysterious shipwreck. Life-changing experiences happen every day in a pool. Adaptive Divers experience weightlessness and freedom in the water and then start thinking about all the other things they can do. Diveheart also works with disabled veterans. Often, these veterans are depressed and have feelings of loss following amputations. In the water, these men and women feel “whole” and realize they can do anything. Elliott says he often sees changes happen after a single session.

The project has included hundreds of hours of editing, revision and discussion. It took two trips to Florida for me to understand exactly what it takes for Adaptive Divers to dive. The hardest part for me was comprehending the level of bravery and trust. Imagine trusting your dive buddies so much that you will jump in the water and make a dive without the ability to swim on your own, or pinch your own nose to clear your ears. There are blind divers who experience the thrill of being weightless, but have to trust their buddies enough to willingly step out and fall into the water. The fear of drowning could be overwhelming, but these divers do it anyway; for the adventure and for the opportunity to have new experiences.

In May, we spent a week in Key Largo shooting training video segments at the Jacobs Aquatics Center and on a dive boat donated for our efforts by Rainbow Reef Dive Center. The staff and boat crew from Rainbow Reef, under the direction of owner DJ Wood, provided tremendous service and joined in on the shoot, holding reflectors and serving as on-screen talent.

Rather than being exclusive or proprietary with these materials, Elliott plans to make them available to the entire dive industry for use as reference tools for any dive instructor or buddy who works with Adaptive Divers and wants to learn from Diveheart, and Elliott’s, experience. The project is in its final stages. Some last minute edits and the Adaptive Diver and Adaptive Scuba Instructor and Dive Buddy manuals will soon be available, along with an online training system for use by adaptive dive buddies and instructors. Last week, I joined Elliott, Wilhelmina Stanton and a few volunteers at the Diveheart booth at the DEMA Show in Orlando, Florida to announce the program and begin talking to the dive industry about the new program and materials. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

This is the first of three blog posts about Diveheart and the development of a ground-breaking set of training materials to train adaptive divers and adaptive dive buddies and instructors to learn to scuba dive. Next week (November 18), I’ll talk about the video shoot process for filming training materials and the third installment (November 25) will include lessons I’ve learned from working with Elliott and some of the Adaptive Divers I’ve met through Diveheart.

I’ll also be releasing a new Jackson Pauley/Withrow Key short story with a character inspired by Diveheart. The story is called Caesar’s Gold..

Veterans Day is a time to say thank you

November 11, 2013 By Eric Douglas

The following column ran in the local newspaper last week. A couple days ago, I learned that another of the veterans I interviewed for the West Virginia Voices of War documentary and the book Common Valor passed away. Rex Miller fought in the Battle of the Bulge and rode a self-propelled artillery gun across Europe in World War II. That sacrifice, and the sacrifice of those who followed after him, should never be forgotten. This column is dedicated to Rex and everyone else who served.

Quite a few holidays have morphed from their original intent: Memorial Day, Halloween, and don’t get me started about Christmas.

The holiday celebrated on November 11, Veterans Day, has changed, too, but this is an evolving holiday that has improved over the years. According to Wikipedia, Veterans Day “coincides with other holidays such as Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, which are celebrated in other parts of the world and also mark the anniversary of the end of World War I. (Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when the Armistice with Germany went into effect.)”

In 1945 Raymond Weeks, a WWII veteran, had the idea to make the holiday a National Veterans Day, honoring all those who served. He led the first celebration in 1947 in Alabama and every year after that until he died in 1985. President Reagan honored Weeks with the Presidential Citizenship Medal and referred to Weeks as the “Father of Veterans Day.” It became an official federal holiday in 1954.

While conducting interviews for the West Virginia Voices of War documentary and the companion book Common Valor, I spoke to many more veterans than agreed to sit down with me and give me an interview. Most of the ones who didn’t want to talk demurred, saying their story wasn’t all that significant, or they weren’t heroes. I wasn’t necessarily looking for “heroes” in the project, but I accepted their No with a “thank you for your service” and let it go at that. At a recent meeting, I heard a veteran talking to a veterans group and he was embarrassed that he hadn’t deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. I thought it was very important that everyone in the room told him that wasn’t important. They regarded him as an equal because he served.

Say thank you to a veteran on Veterans Day. And every day after that.

IT IS THE SOLDIER

It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

Charles M. Province, U.S. Army, 1970.

Happy 238th Birthday to the United States Marine Corps

November 10, 2013 By Eric Douglas

When I was preparing the West Virginia Voices of War documentary, I was honored to speak to several West Virginia war veterans who served their country in the United States Marine Corps. They are all included in the documentary and longer versions of their stories are included in the book Common Valor.

As the West Virginia Voices of War project developed, I prepared excerpts from two Marines:

Hershel “Woody” Williams, Medal of Honor recipient on Iwo Jima

Bob Payne, a Marine wounded in Korea.

The following is also an audio piece based solely on Hershel “Woody” Williams that was never released.

I have always heard it said “Once a Marine, Always a Marine.” I am sure that is true. So, on this 238^th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, I offer my best wishes and Happy Birthday to all United States Marines.

Of course, tomorrow is Veterans Day, another opportunity to thank a veteran for the freedoms we all have and appreciate..

Halloween, religious holidays and donuts

October 31, 2013 By Eric Douglas

Halloween isn’t exactly Black Friday, but it is the highest revenue-producing holiday for the candy industry, with approximately $2.5 billion in sales. That’s an incredible amount of sugar for one day. Of course, the less desirable Halloween candy tends to hang around much longer.

While Halloween is a night many dress in costumes and knock on doors asking/begging for candy, others look forward to the ‘trick” aspect, moving into the world of the criminal (See Devil’s Night in Detroit). It didn’t always mean that, however. Believe it or not, there is actually a religious significance to Halloween.

Halloween is All-Hallows’-Eve which is the night-before-All Saints’ Day. All Saints’ Day is also known as All Hallows Day—see the connection? Until the 1950s, when the Catholic Church simplified the church calendar, it was actually a liturgical vigil. All Saints’ Day also corresponds to the Day of the Dead where people (mostly in Latin America) remember those who have passed on, a sort of Memorial Day. Day of the Dead typically celebrates children who have died on November 1 and adults on November 2.

Trick or Treating has its roots in “souling” or “guising” (wearing disguises) where the poor would go around door to door asking for treats in exchange for saying prayers for the dead. Wearing costumes is a Celtic tradition where people would try to copy or placate evil spirits. When the poor would knock, they would beg for soul cakes—a type of short bread. According to legend, one chef was determined to make eaters think of heaven with every bite. She cut a hole in the middle of the cake, dropped it in hot fat and the donut was born.

Of course, if you go back even further than the Middle Ages, the pagan festival of Samhain was celebrated around the same time and marked the end of fall and the coming of winter, bridging the ancient world to a time of darkness and death. The church either “blessed” that tradition and took it over, or simply created a new festival to give the people something to celebrate.

Like a lot of holidays, modern society has changed the original message or purpose away from the religious and toward the secular, corrupting the original purpose. I enjoy the fun of Halloween, but in some ways I think it’s a shame that we’ve moved away from the original idea of remembering those who have gone on before us, saints or not, and reflecting on the year that has just past.

It is a real shame, though, that no one is giving out donuts for Trick or Treat anymore. I could get into that one…

Read the rest of the stories from me and a few friends on the Halloween 2013 Collection page. They include a couple works of fiction and a couple creative nonfiction pieces. You be the judge..