"From Richard.....(a true story)"
Brian is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers out of
Louisiana and performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.
Below is an email he sent to his sister.
Anytime you think you have had a bad day at the office, remember this
letter....True story.
April, 1998
Hi Sue,
Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother.
Last week I had a bad day at the office. Before I can tell you what
happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of
my job.
As you know my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit
to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite
cool.
So what we do to keep warm is this:
We have a diesel powered industrial water heater.
This $20,000 piece of sh*t sucks the water out of the sea. It heats
it to a delightful temp. It then pumps it down to the diver through a
garden hose which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a damn
good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints.
What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is I take the
hose and stuff it down the back of my neck. This floods my whole suit
with warm water. It's like working in a jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my ass started to
itch.
So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a
few seconds my ass started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back,
but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot
water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.
This is even worse than the poison ivy you once had under a cast.
Now I had that hose down my back. I don't have any hair on my back, so
the jellyfish couldn't get stuck to my back. My ass crack was not as
fortunate.
When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into my ass. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the comms.
His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he along with 5
other divers were laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the
dive.
I was instructed to make 3 agonizing in-water decompression stops
totaling 35 minutes before I could come to the surface for my chamber
dry decompression.
I got to the surface wearing nothing but my brass helmet. My suit
and gear were tied to the bell. When I got on board the medic, with
tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and
told me to shove it up my ass when I get in the chamber. The cream put
the fire out, but I couldn't shit for two days because my asshole was
swollen shut.
I later found out that this could easily have been prevented if the
suction hose was placed on the leeward side of the ship.
Anyway, the next time you have a bad day at the office, think of me.
Think about how much worse your day would be if you were to shove a
jellyfish up your ass. I hope you have no bad days at the office. But if
you do, I hope this will make more tolerable.
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