Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Sad Last Chapter

 Altitude sickness and cerebral edema are funny things.  Random, unpredictable, and sneaky.  But the signs and symptoms are undeniable.  Vigilance and monitoring are key.  So is medical attention when things get bad.

Today, thanks to cerebral edema, I continue to have fairly significant health problems.  I have a "profound"  hearing loss in my right ear.  I took a heavy round of steroids to try to reverse it but so far no good.  One morning last week I woke up with double vision.  It still comes and goes, as does dizziness and imbalance.  Cerebral edema.  The gift that keeps on giving.

I was starving for oxygen during the trek.  How do I know?  Our guides checked our oxygen saturation (how much oxygen is in your blood) at least once a day with this little thingie called a pulse oximeter that they put on our finger.  For almost the entire length of my trek the oxygen saturation in my blood was in the 70% range. Anything under 90% is considered low.   Anything below 88% is dangerous.  

One evening not too long before I decided to turn around my oxygen saturation was in the 50% range.  Now this is Low.  With a capital L.  Your body begins to die because it's not receiving enough oxygen. Many people lose consciousness at this level.  I was awake but confused.  It was like I was in a fog.  I had a blinding headache, nausea, no appetite, and I couldn't sleep.  The symptoms  had been going on for days.  I didn't make it a secret, either.  I guess you could say I was a whiner, but in this case a legitimate whiner.  I'm pretty sure we had oxygen with us, but I never saw it.

I alone made the decision to turn around. I descended with my friend Rick and a Sherpa. Rick isn't a medical person, nor is he trained to recognize or treat altitude sickness.  What should have been a 2.5 hour trip took almost 6 hours.  What a terrible, terrible nightmare.

I'm thankful to be home but scared and uncertain about my future.   I know things could always be worse but I sure didn't see this coming.  I hope that with time at least some of this will resolve, but no one can predict a complete recovery. 

I'll keep blogging from time to time.  But not about anything as frightening, dangerous, and life threatening as my trip to Nepal.

2 comments:

  1. I am very much happy to share to every viewers that is reading this,I want to inform the whole public of how I got help for my herpes, I wanted this since 6 months ago, I have also taken treatment from some doctor,few weeks back I came on the net to see if I will be able to get any information as to cure my herpes, on my search I saw various testimony of people who was helped by a great man called Dr Akhigbe and without any hesitation, I contacted him, I wrote to him and and he guided me, I asked him for solutions and he started the remedies for me and indeed 3 weeks after I started using the medicine, I was completely happy as it worked for me.I went to the hospital for check up and indeed I was declared negative from my disease, and I also waited again for two weeks and went back to another hospital for check up to be fully sure and to my great surprise I was still declared negative, and I decided to share this great opportunity to those people out there fighting this sickness, You can contact him now for your medicine to cure your diseases, contact his Email; drrealakhigbe@gmail.com or Whatsapp +2348142454860. website. hpps:drrealakhigbe.weebly.com

    Dr Akhigbe also cure diseases like..
    HIV
    Herpes
    Cancer
    Chronic Disease
    Asthma
    Parkinson's disease
    External infection
    Als
    Nausea, Vomiting or Diarrhea
    Heart Disease
    Diabetes
    Kidney Disease
    Lupus
    Epilepsy
    Stroke
    Eczema
    Eating Disorder
    Back Pain. etc
    contact him for your solution.

    ReplyDelete