Well, my tenacity to conquer the next leg of this grueling trek was stopped quite suddenly upon my awakening this morning to an enormous mind shattering headache. I could barely open my eyes being that the sunlight only encouraged the throbbing of my head. The Ibuprofen consumed the day before had only masked the symptoms of the altitude sickness, only to get its revenge on me this morning. After speaking with a few other trekkers about this, I realized that if I pressed on, I might as well be signing myself into a hospital. This acute mountain sickness (AMS) was way more serious than I thought. Everyone told me to stay in Dingboche for the day to try to acclimatize and to go to the altitude sickness seminar that took place at 3pm to get some more information on my illness.
After sleeping, most of the day, trying to hydrate myself as much as possible, and having serious doubts about my ability to complete this trek, 3pm rolled around and I went to the seminar that probably saved my life. A nice lady from Scotland was doing mountain rescue training and education in the Himalayas for her doctorate and was quite informative on the matter of altitude sickness. Turns out my splitting headaches were due to fluids building up in my brain, causing it to swell. I simply just wasn’t used to being at over 15,000ft. If I would have climbed much higher without giving my body time to adjust and get used to the increase, I could have gone into Acoma. It was very interesting to find out that chain smokers that are out of shape and eat poorly can just as easily ascend with no problems at all. I also found it quite interesting that adjusting to altitude is a hereditary ability that affects everyone differently. I guess a majority of my ancestors lived at lower altitudes. Oh, and of course living at sea level for a year didn’t help too much as well.
After hearing what the lady had to say, I spoke with her one on one to get some help on continuing my trek. She recommended a drug called Diamox that wouldn’t mask the symptoms but actually help my body acclimate to the increasing altitudes. She also recommended going no further than 1000ft a day from this point on and to drink at least 5 liters of water a day. Being that we traveled almost 2000m without a rest day, I suppose I was a bit overdue for one. Hopefully this all works, because despite how I am feeling, I am determined to make it to Everest Base Camp.
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