While Wayne and his wife went on a vacation in Thailand, I considered the issue of swimming again. I rapidly discovered that almost all of the public pools in the Seattle area had made provision for people in wheelchairs. A trip to the Bellevue aquatic center led to the discovery that not only do they have wheelchairs and hydraulic chairs for lowering people into the pool but in their warm pool they even have a ramp that allows a wheelchair to simply be rolled into the pool.
One major issue was that when I went swimming with Wayne I was capable of changing in the men's locker room with Wayne to assist me. If I went swimming with my wife that possibility would not be available to me. Fortunately, the Bellevue aquatic center has considered this issue and has family changing rooms which are private and allow a disabled person and their assistant to change in a small room which even has a private shower. Another accommodation that Bellevue makes is that the the assistant of a handicapped person does not have to pay for use of the pool.
With this knowledge I tried swimming at the Bellevue aquatic center with my wife. By now it had been at least a month and a half since I had been swimming and I had significant improvement in the function of my legs. I was surprised to find that when I swam on my back my legs would naturally kick with the same rhythm as my arms. By concentrating on the movement of my legs I was able to get a significant kick from my legs to assist the movement of my arms. After we discovered that my legs were helping me to swim we gave the legs some assistance by putting on fins, forcing them to do more work but allowing them to help more.
The video below shows me swimming while using a frog kick.
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