Diving Artist Paints Mural on Deco Chamber!
	© Copyright 2003    Bill Jones    World Rights Reserved

 
Key Largo, Florida.  Mariners Hospital has the only hospital-based hyperbaric (decompression) chamber in the Florida Keys.  Last summer, the chamber was up-graded with a state-of-the-art chamber that included a state-of-the-art price tag.  Not too surprising, a month-long fundraising effort was begun with the help of the Mariners Hospital Foundation to pay for the new unit.  An Islamorada artist Stacie Krupa donated her skills to create a mural painted directly on the outside walls of the chamber featuring an array of colorful sea creatures including a large turtle, an octopus, a sea horse, corals, and loads of various tropical saltwater fish.  The cost of the paint and painting supplies was donated by James and Maryann Bokor of Plantation Key, Florida.

It looks pretty cool, but I told Stacie she should have painted a couple of divers swimming around the chamber with the fish.  Maybe divers on a deco chamber would have been a bad omen.  All of this just goes to prove that a hyperbaric chamber may be a fun place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to go there for real.