It's a reminder, five months later.

Sometimes the pain comes when the junior swimmer at Kearns High is curling a dumbbell in the weight room. Sometimes it comes when he's in the pool during a meet, trying to earn points for a young boys' team looking for direction after it said goodbye to 10 swimmers, one season removed from a second-place finish at the Class 5-A state championship meet at Brigham Young.

"I used to take things for granted," Huff said. "Almost every move I make, it hurts. When I'm walking, when I'm sitting."

The quick, sharp sting doesn't happen often these days.

When it does, he's reminded that he almost lost everything when he suffered what is called a primary generalized epilepsy. His two individual state podium finishes only months before, his turn in a succession of brothers who are known as good, even great, swimmers - all those things were meaningless when he was lying in a hospital bed at the University of Utah.

Almost six months ago, Huff fell from a lifeguard chair about 7 feet high at the swimming pool across the street from Kearns, hitting his head against a nearby ladder before he rolled into the water. A co-worker pulled out a wet and unconscious Huff, who was having a seizure.

Paramedics were called, and then calls went out to family, friends, teammates, coaches, even opposing swimmers.

"I thought, 'This isn't real,' '' teammate Justin Christensen said. "He's invincible. He's a Huff."

Huffs are supposed to rule the pool. They're supposed to challenge state records. They're supposed to go onto coaching, like his older brother Jared, who guided the Murray boys' swim team to a state championship last year in Class 4-A. They're supposed to become the state MVPs in water polo, which Adam Huff did as a sophomore.

They're not supposed to fall and crack a rib, puncturing a lung. His doctor didn't know why he had the seizure. But Huff said the accident could've been the result of grueling eight-hour-a-day workouts for the junior national water polo team in Newport, Calif., only a week earlier.

His doctor doesn't know if he'll ever have another seizure. That didn't stop Huff from swallowing 20 pills a day during the first month of recovery. He'll take a handful of pills every day for the next two years.

And it didn't stop him from jumping right back into the sport he started when he 6 years old.

"The hardest part about being back from the accident is realizing that I'm not as fast as I was last year," Huff said. "In some events, my times are faster. In others, they're slower. I'm getting back up there, getting back into good shape."

For someone with a punctured lung, he's not doing so bad. Entering the week, Huff had the fifth-fastest time in the 50-yard freestyle in Class 5-A, and he's in the top 15 in seven other events, which would be good enough to qualify for state in all of them.

Not bad, for five months later.

The waterfront

* In July, Kearns swimmer Adam Huff suffered a seizure, leaving his future in the sport uncertain.

* He's back in the pool now, however, and has the fifth-fastest time in the 50-yard freestyle in Class 5-A.