I was pretty sure that when the folks in the ER were eventually able to get my leather welding jacket off of me, my arm was just going to plop onto the floor, still in my glove, if they weren't extremely careful (leather was too thick to cut with their fancy stuff... so they just had to pull... and pull... and pull...) 
. It's the only large bone I've ever broken, thankfully, and required 4 days in the hospital, a big SS plate, a bunch of screws, and some bone from a generous and altruistic cow. 
I now have a big manly scar outboard of my bicep and will be forced to go lefty if I ever want an oversized heart/mom tattoo. 
I also took on heck of a bunch of morphine, more than anyone thought was a good idea, only to find that my body doesn't really metabolize it. On the upside, this finally shed some light on my unnatural tolerance for tequila, but on the downside... morphine, in quantity, lowers your respiration, a lot, which is why it is the "make them comfortable" medicine for those on their way to the great beyond. Between that & the latent effects of the general anesthesia, my lungs were no dooin' so good... This too had a silver lining, however, in that like some (but not all ) other parts of me; my lungs are huge and pretty strong from years of playing the Baritone Horn, albeit poorly, as a youth. What has any of this to do with anything... well; they gave me one of these:http://www.amazon.com/Medline-Incentive ... spirometer
and I had to use it a lot to get myself dried-out and squared away. Works great, very simple, and like most bio-feedback based equipment, is pretty fun, in a stuck-in-a-hospital-bed-nothing-to-do-kinda-competitive way. Since I'm sure I am not the only one here with this weekness, I will confess to having no ability to throw anything away, so this $10 piece of plastic has moved with me over 20 years through 5 houses/3 states... just because, who knows... I might need that...!
And a final piece of cosmic alignment, lo and behold, I DID NEED THAT. My 10-year old has taken up Trombone, and although he has terrific aerobic fitness from years of soccer, he could stand with some volumetric stretching..., and if there's a way to make something a competition, he's all in!
The thing measures the total inhaled volume & the rate, both very simply by means of some yellow balls and a scale, idea being, to keep increasing the max volume but to keep the rate slow and steady throughout. Very low-tec but visually engaging dodad.None of which has anything to do with diving, except that this thing would do generally about the same as the other breathing trainer results wise, costs 1/3 the price, and is a way to clearly demonstrate to the Mrs. that NO, you are NOT just watching tv from your perch in the Barcalounger, YOU ARE TRAINING!!! because spring will be here before you know it and Safe Diving & a low SAC are top priorities!
