Rescue Time

Well 2 days after successfully summitting Island Peak I was being helicopter rescued from the Khumbu back to Kathmandu.  After Island Peak my intention was to head to Everest Base Camp (EBC) and also climb Kala Patthar, however, I could feel I wasn't fully rested and recovered from the Island Peak climb and when I got to Lobuche I knew there was something not right with my body and needed to go down.  And so my rescue journey began and ended up with me in ICU in Kathmandu with a condition called Rhabdomyolysis (quite a mouthful) with the effects being severe enough for there to be significant concern amongst the doctors that my kidneys were on the verge of failure.

Rhabdo is a serious enough and potentially fatal condition whereby the skeletal muscle starts to breakdown.  In my case most of this breakdown was in my legs and they sure were sore.  As the muscle cells 'burst' they release their contents into the bloodstream and many of these are toxic as they build up and in my case as the kidneys try to remove these toxins (in particular a protein called myoglobin) they get overworked and overrun and eventually just can't cope - kidney failure. 

There are several factors that can cause Rhabdo and for me the belief was that it was owing to severe dehydration combined with severe muscular exercise.  Treatments vary, but in my case days of intra-veinous fluids followed by constant rigour on my part in imbibing fluids washes the toxins and bad stuff out of the bloodstream and slowly the kidneys start to function properly again.

Back on my feet again in Ireland I do a sort of 'lessons learned' appraisal of my trip - what went well and what didn't go so well and what are the learnings.  In particular I was keen to assess whether what happened to me was preventable and what I could have done different. Hindsight is great of course, and the areas I focused on were my physical preparation and my hydration strategy.  Could I have done more in my preparation for the trip?  Physically, I had hit all the milestones I had set with my trainer.  I was fitter than I had ever been.  However, I recognised that I needed to be quicker getting up and down the mountain and where I leaked time was on the technical aspects of the climb - ascending using the jumar and descending using the belay.  Whilst I had a familiarisation and training session before going and a half-day on the trip itself, further time and practice would have been beneficial particularly in winter conditions.    Dehydration is obviously linked to this.  On the summit day I drank some water before leaving high-camp and carried 2 litres of water with me.  But this water was all gone early in the descent and with an overall 21 hour climb and trek, I drank far too little.  So, this is definitely something that needs focus and may have resulted in a different outcome if managed differently.

However, all-in-all, what a trip.  The scale of the Himalayas, the beauty of Nepal - the country and her people, the laughs, the challenges, meeting some absolute mountaineering legends, pushing myself physically and mentally to new places - none of this I would change or swap out.  But in particular, the team - Irish & Sherpa, led by Jason Black was incredible - in spite of being cooped up together for 14+ days, there wasn't a bad word or a complaint from anybody and everybody contributed to building a fantastic team.

This is my last post focused on Island Peak - it's time to move on to the next challenge.  So, until next time Nepal!