     | september 3, 2010
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| september 3, 2010
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Dispatch from Mt. Everest #3: Everest ER Lincoln Else -- 08/30/2004  April 25th, Base Camp, 17,600 feet (give or take depending on how tall you are)Joe is a teacher from New Jersey, and last week his body decided that climbing Everest was, as many would agree, an exceptionally bad idea. After reaching Camp 2 at around 21,000 feet, Joe’s lungs said, affectionately, “Screw this” and started filling with fluid. The phenomenon is known as pulmonary edema and can happen to anyone at high altitude. At first it just makes you feel weak, but as the condition worsens you get less and less oxygen, basically drowning. No really, Mom, this is a safe sport, I swear. As chance would have it, I’ve spent part of the last month filming a documentary about the highest medical clinic on earth (that’s a guess, but a pretty confident one). Two years ago Luanne Freer, a doctor from Bozeman Montana, started the Everest Basecamp Clinic in an effort to provide quality medical care to climbers, Sherpas, and whoever else knocks on her tent. Expeditions have traditionally brought doctors of their own, but not all teams can afford one, and those that can sometimes bring a mute podiatrist from Florida. Luanne, on the other hand, is just the person you want when your body decides climbing Everest was a bad idea. When I met Joe and his guide part way down the Ice Fall, Joe couldn’t walk. What I could see of his face behind the oxygen mask was a pale shade of blue, and his continual cough sounded like something I never want to experience. Based on a quick medical assessment, he looked like shit. With the help of a half dozen Sherpas we got Joe down to Base Camp and into the clinic tent just after dark. Luanne later told me she’d never seen anyone so close to death, yet still alive, with pulmonary edema. Every breath sounded like a Harley changing gears, and he could only talk in short bursts. First things first: get Joe warm, pump him full of drugs to clear his breathing, and get him in a Gamow Bag. The only real cure for altitude problems is to go down, down to where the atmospheric pressure is higher and the oxygen is thicker. Unfortunately that’s not always possible: for instance, if you’re at the foot of Mt. Everest at night with a storm rolling in. The next best thing is to simulate going down by getting in a big plastic bag and forcing it full of air with a foot pump. MacGyver could fashion such a device with some duct tape and a tent fly, but the rest of us have to buy the commercial version called a Gamow Bag (pronounced “gamov”). Every household should have at least one. Up to this point in Joe’s saga I was playing camera guy and watching his adventure through a viewfinder, but when shit hit the fan I propped the camera on a box and helped get him into the bag. Picture an episode of ER, machines beeping, tubes tangling, people yelling “stat!” and a tipsy David Breashears walking in the door with glitter on his face. For the record, none of the doctors at basecamp have ever actually used the word “stat,” and for those who have forgotten, David Breashears is the famous filmmaker who has been my neighbor for the last month. In the midst of Joe’s tragedy, I was happy to delegate some responsibility to a trained professional, “Hey David, that camera’s rolling, pick it up and start shooting.” end of page 1 [ 1 ] read more ... [ 2 ][ 3 ] |
