I’d planned to cross-country ski and horseback ride in the snow at the C Lazy U Guest Ranch & Resort in Granby, Colorado (http://www.clazyu.com/). Instead, I was lying on a gurney in the emergency clinic at the Granby Medical Center (http://www.blogger.com/www.summitmedicalcenter.org/index.php/2409/Mountain-Clinics?parent_id=1310) suffering from an acute case of altitude sickness and dehydration, attached to both an oxygen tank and an I.V. I watched as the fluid went drip drip drip at snail’s pace down the clear tubing. The pain hammered non-stop through my temples, my forehead, between my eyes, and even the back of my neck. I felt weak, nauseous, dehydrated, had been vomiting non-stop since last night, and I had chills.
The nurse asked, “Would you like a blanket?” I nodded yes and she returned within seconds to tuck a heated blanket around me.
“Heated? Wow!”
“We want you to be comfortable,” she smiled. A smiling nurse? This was so different than the surly E.R. nurses in New York City who frowned if you asked for a blanket and resented the fact that you were injured. The nurse was so caring and attentive that I almost felt I was in a resort rather than in an E.R. at an oxygen-challenging 8,000 feet above sea level.
Dr. Jeffrey Lipke came into the room. He was somewhere in his thirties, movie-star good-looking, and with a smile that could melt a glacier. There were other patients in the E.R., including a teen who’d been injured in a snowboarding accident; still, Dr.Lipke seemed to have all the time in the world for me. When I explained that the day before I’d flown early in the morning from NYC to Denver, spent the day hiking in Boulder, then had a huge meal paired with different wines, he told me that you have to avoid alcohol and coffee at altitude, drink six to eight glasses of fluids a day and keep sipping when you exercise to keep your fluid level up. “I’m going to give you another IV bag, and then release you with oxygen,” he said.
Me? Walking around in public with an oxygen tank? How humiliating!
“Do you have any other questions?” I’d never met a doctor who asked if I had questions. Too bad he couldn’t be cloned.
Five hours later, I returned to my hotel, where the woman from the oxygen company set up a plug-in apparatus in my room. She told me she has to deliver about five tanks of oxygen per day.
“Do you want a backpack?” she askd
“What for?”
“In case you want to do something outside. Yesterday I gave a 13-year-old boy a backpack so he could go snowmobiling,
I told her I wouldn’t need oxygen tomorrow, that I’d be fine, but she insisted I’d need it at least for the next four days.
FOUR DAYS? Not me! I’d wake up normal.
But in the morning, my head still pounded, my stomach was queasy, and I could barely climb down a flight of stairs. I knew the only way my symptoms would disappear would be to get back to sea level, so I threw down the oxygen tube, re-booked my return flight, returned to Denver, and flew back to NY.
I plan to go back to Colorado, but next time, I’m going to mainline water, drink no alcohol or caffeine, and take it easy my first day. Let’s face it – anyone can get altitude sickness and if you’ve had it once, you can still get it again. So even though the E.R. doctor at the Granby Medical Center is a hunk, I’d rather spend my time playing outdoors, not lying prone on a gurney.
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