Still not having worked out the busses and entrances, I’m once again not as early as I might like for session 3.

I go in, and Short and Terse brings me the new mask, saying a few short sentences that zoom past me and don’t make a lot of sense. Eventually she says ‘let me go get Kind Smile to explain it to you.’
Another (different) lady with a kind smile comes in and starts to explain the mask to me.

‘Ok, let’s hook you up. Now, the fresh oxygen comes through here, near your mouth. And the air goes out of this tube on the other side… oh…’ she pauses, squinting at the tube leading in. ‘There’s usually a valve here to stop the air you breathe out from coming back in and this doesn’t seem to have one… but I’m sure it’ll be fine. The fresh air will be coming in anyway so I’m sure it’ll all just get pushed out…’

In a couple of brief minutes, she tries to explain to me how to turn my oxygen supply up and down. With this mask, I have to manage my oxygen myself, which is a terrifying thought. I’m instructed to keep the mask mostly full, but not too full. Just this much, see? But definitely no more. Any more full, and it’ll leak out the neck and I’ll ruin everyone else’s session. Any less, and I’ll asphyxiate.

‘Turn the valve to the right to make it stop, to the left when you want air.’
I nod, trying to take it all in.
‘So it’s to the right for air and to the left for off. And you have to twist it about 8 twists to get it to come on. Left. No, right.’
I was clearly overwhelmed by it all, struggling to work out the rights and left, like she seemed to be too, so she reassuringly said:
‘You’ll hear it coming in, so you’ll be able to tell. Hear that?’
I could hear a faint hissing. I nodded.
‘Ok, cool, thanks.’ I could listen for the hissing, all good. I just had to make sure it was at the same specific level of fullness by letting air in then stopping it, over and over as required. I guess I could do it, if children could.

But when we start diving, I can hear nothing over the whooshing of air out of the diving bell, getting us all down to the right air pressure. I can’t really tell when the oxygen is on or off, and if it is on, how much I’m letting in.

I start out ok, but struggling to manage the air flow in and out. There’s no fresh air at all. The mask is full, but all the air I’m breathing is hot. It doesn’t seem to be moving away, I just keep breathing in the same air I had just breathed out. But if I let any more fresh air in, it would fill it up too much and I’d ruin it for everyone else.

The responsibility of my own life and everyone else’s session feels heavy on my shoulders.

The thumping of my heart in my deaf ear – the constant soundtrack to my life – switches suddenly up to maximum volume as my heart races. I start to feel dizzy, and my head is throbbing with pain.
I’d been told to breathe through my nose so the hood doesn’t fog up, but of course I can’t, because my nose was blocked off during surgery half a decade ago (woah, what even is time?).

So by half an hour in, the hood has all fogged up and I can’t see anything or anyone anymore. My headache is getting worse and I’m starting to feel dizzy. Things inside the hood are just getting hotter and I feel so weird and light headed…

Short and Terse’s words keep echoing in my head: ‘you must stay relaxed.’
My heart races faster.

I try to let in just a bit of fresh air to breathe it in but almost immediately I feel the air in the hood escaping at my neck and I have to turn the air supply back off. Eventually, I break.

‘No, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,’ I say, pulling the hood off. I don’t know if I’m ruining everyone’s session, but I just can’t keep going. I’m suffocating.
‘Can I swap back?’ I say, but I don’t know who to. No one else in the diving bell is making eye contact, but one guy who I’d met on my first day had pressed the ‘we’re in trouble’ button I didn’t know existed.
‘Yes, of course,’ Kind Smile’s voice comes through from the other side of the diving bell walls. I knew there was a speaker that amplified her voice to us, but maybe she could hear me too.

‘Do you know how to do it?’ She asks
‘Yes,’ I stammer. I pick things up quickly.
‘Take your time,’ she replies and I can hear the kindness in her voice.

So I sit there crying, fumbling to connect my original mask, trying to breathe in the air-that-isn’t-water in the meantime, get some oxygen back into my lungs. I try to relax, though I realise my hands are shaking slightly.
Kind Smile adds little comments as I take my time, saying how well I’m doing, how great I am. Her voice is so reassuring. Then she reminds me, once I switch, that I no longer have to manage my own oxygen with this mask. PHEW. How do kids manage that?

So it’s back to the original mask for the rest of the session. It keeps slipping against my face as somewhere along the way it filled up with my tears. The lesser of two evils though, I’ll take it.

When we finish, Kind smile comes to tell me once again how well I’d done, and how smooth my mask swap over was.
‘You even remembered to turn off the oxygen!’ she said. ‘I was very impressed!’
I thank her, though of course I hadn’t intentionally turned the oxygen off, I just had to have it off so the hood didn’t overfill… I’d practically had it like that the whole time… No new oxygen had been able to get in…
I actually thought I’d left it on in my last ditch effort to get some air…

After the session, I go and admit my defeat. I tell Short and Terse that I couldn’t do it, I had to take it off after half an hour.
‘Now you know how hard it is for the children,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I was thinking that! How on earth do they manage the oxygen levels?’
‘Oh, they don’t. That’s all done for them. It’s just you who has to manage it yourself…’
‘Ummmm oooohhhhkkkaaayyyyyy…..?????? Anyway, I’ll just deal with the pain with the mask.’
‘Yes, you will put up with it like everyone else, like we all must.’
‘I… um… ok…’

I felt sad and empty after the session. I decided to walk the 45mins to the Overground station instead of getting the bus. I walked through the industrial estate, onto the main road, which I walked down for a while before ducking down a side street and into the suburban area.

The sun had come out and the streets were so beautiful, so quaint. And before long I found myself smiling. I had done well. I had toughed out half an hour of that horrible hood thing. I had an action plan that I’d worked out beforehand – to have my other mask easily at hand and to swap over if I needed it – and I’d smashed it. My bestie Katie in Sydney had talked it all over with me that morning as she walked me to the session (via phone call – technology, eh?).

Since I had to fast before each session, I was suffering mentally due to the fact I hadn’t really been able to do the one thing that’s helped me get through all of the various treatments and tests and scans I’ve had over the past 6 years – turn my sessions into adventures. I was in a new area of London and each time I got off the train, there were all sorts of cafes calling to me that I was eager to try. But before the sessions I couldn’t consume anything at all (other than water of course), and afterwards was too late for coffee, and I had to rush home to catch my short daily eating window anyway.

But after my third session that day, I said fuck it, I’m getting a dammed coffee. Hang the consequences. So I went into one that looked good and got my coveted ‘flat white with oat milk, please’.

And it tasted so good. A nice little side to my sweet tasting victory. And I sat there with my coffee, with the afternoon sun streaming in, causing everything to have long shadows that stretched across the light-filled floor, and I smiled so much I nearly cried. Tears of joy at how much I love my life and how glad I am for it, the sorts of tears which are never very far away.

Three days down. I wonder if it’s going to get any easier…

(P.s. bonus points for anyone who can pick the reference made in the title of this post. Lemme know below if you get it – no Googling allowed, you cheeky things!)