29 vs 60

So I caught covid for a third time, I can pretty much guess where from. I have nearly had all the shots and the little virus keeps morphing into a newer version of itself, skipping right past my immune system. I am now told I can catch this as many times as it learns to evade those barriers.

Great.

I knew something was wrong when I woke up at 3AM feeling like shit. I sat on the edge of the bed, letting the clock radio just play, for an hour. I didn’t move but just sat there spacing out. I finally stirred myself to get straightened out in the bathroom and noticed I was panting, sucking in air. Wonderful, just like the last time. By the end of drying my hair, my head was tilting back, on it’s own and I was sucking in more air. Looking a little too much like a fish out of water and feeling it. I think of my Dad and brother, who both were taken out by lung ailments and think only my brother had the benefit of morphine which made numb as a board to the reality of gasping. My Dad, no such luck, he waited too long to go to any hospital before he fell, drowning in his own snot.

”Fuck.Me. That’s it,” I tell myself, “go to ER.”

I get to Sturdy ER in 20 minutes, park the car and sit there as that raw rain just pelted the car, looking at the 40 yards I’ll have to walk to make it in the door. I was trying to get that motivation to “do it,” trying to finally jerk myself out of the car and go. If I pass out onto the wet pavement, perhaps some one will notice?

I make it and get checked in. They do the vitals and off I go to the nearest bed. EKG rhythms were fine but fast, 02 not great and blood tests stable. I get that covid nose swab test that burns the back of my sinuses and the test comes back positive. WTF...again?

Albuterol via mouth, salmeterol in the right arm and some other IV in the left. After it all kicks in, I feel a bit better but the fast speaking Indian Dr says it’ll really take hours for the full effect to work.

“Don’t wait again if you notice strange postures you take to breathe.” he tells me. “Get here! Covid still can be tricky.” He glances at the computer screen, reading the family history and says to himself, “Wow, both your Dad and brother? Before 46 years old!”

A reassuring comment...

They finally kick me out with a script for prednisone for five days.

I look at the Dr as he’s typing that order to CVS on his laptop and I tell him, “You know, at one time, I used to hike up mountains.”

“Did you? I can bet you were alot younger when you did.” he says. “Well, I don’t think you’ll be able to do those anymore. With your history, age and the fact covid knocks you down a little bit each time, and unfortunately, that’s your new baseline...Can you just take walks in a park now? I’d advise something that can’t tax your body like hiking a mountain.”

I’ve been taking the prednisone since Saturday and thank god it finally kicked in, taking off that foot that’s been standing on my chest. I will tell you this, that stuff WORKS.

So now, a more positive story about strangling to breathe.

**

Since I was in Portland, OR I knew Mt St Helens was just a three hour drive away and National Park Service did let you go in, on particular roads and IF earthquake activity was below 2.0 and IF there were no landslides across the roads and IF, and IF…

I wasn’t going to pass this up. I was amazed by the 1980 eruption and how massive it was. Now was a chance to stand on it, see it personally, steal a few rocks to prove I was there despite the strictures of taking anything. The ride in is pretty beautiful as you pass through the Gifford Pinchot Forest. A hours long twisting and turning two-lane road past clear cut mountains, lakes, weird green watered freshets and large mammals leaping out of the road ahead of me. You pass through Cougar, WA, a town of 100 with one Post Office and one Quickie mart, plus about 20 HUGE transport helicopters for logging. The road follows the Lewis river for a longish stretch, giving you some nice scenic views. This was not in anyway a drive through Lincoln woods. I had to be warned of cougars in the area and how they eat people from time to time. Again, this isn’t Roger Williams park, this is the real forest. 

 

Parking lot at Windy Ridge and yes it's that black and gray. Click for larger.

The road to Windy Ridge gets you very close to the volcano summit and is a tourist vantage spot. I made it there in late July and the temperature on top was about 50 degrees. I was dressed that day for downtown Portland on an odd warm day. A simple tee shirt, summer shorts and Pony sneakers, not great hiking apparel to begin at 4,000 feet. I get out of the car and start trudging up to the ridge’s peak and notice I’m panting. “Well, that makes sense,” I think, “I’m a sea level dweller with NO acclimation to 4,000 feet. I’ll be OK.” Once over the ridge you head back down again to the blast plain and slowly gain altitude as you approach the mountain. The problem is that the ground is gravel, dust and a brick-back of rubble. Progress is two steps forward and slide one back.

I keep on trudging.

I get close to the east blast ridge and notice that if I go straight, I can shave a good 30 minutes off the trip to the crater. BUT, all along the trail are threatening warnings about ever deviating from the trail as the Nat’l Park Service has deemed the entire area as protected. And there were park personnel and vulcanologists in the area, ready to rat me out had I gone off trail. So I’m a good boy and stay on the proper trail. Other signs warn you to stay the hell away from Spirit Lake to the north, which for some reason spawned a new kind of bacteria after the volcano blew into it. Breathe that in and you get pneumonia the Dr’s will have a hard time controlling. I snapped a picture of the lake from the ridge a good half mile away only to show the tens of thousands of tree trunks still floating in it. I believe in science and never ventured any nearer to that infected water.

I make it around that blast limb and I see inside the crater. It was like God had scooped the entire side and interior of the mountain out his own hand and flung it. I look around to all of the horizon and there is not a single green living thing. It all had been scraped clean by the blast. I was standing on the moon I thought, where once had been a thick forest but now replaced by dark gray shattered debris.

I get excited by seeing the smoke rising from the new rising dome inside the crater. I pick up my pace in the loose gravel and then the skies clouded over fast. In the next minutes, I get pelted by sideways hail and sleet as a high wind blasts everything. The temperature drops suddenly and I start getting cold.

“No! NO!” I will not quit I tell myself. I’m so close.

The sun reappears as fast as it darkened and it warms me up again, though I’m wet now and figure I’ll just dry off in time.

Panting, panting, sucking air. “How high am I? 5,000? 6,000?” I don’t know, but I do know I can see Windy Ridge, where I started is now below me. I tell myself, “Ah, it’s just no acclimation...you haven’t done any legwork like this in a while and your lungs aren’t not used to this height. Press on!”

One threat I was aware of were the effects of not getting enough air is that it fucks with your decision making abilities. It’s why you train for this type of thing and not to make silly decisions with just 16% oxygen in the air at altitude. I reminded myself to stay awake, be in the moment and to make dull boring choices on where to go next.

Eventually, it wasn’t my brain that stopped me, it was the body. It finally said, “Oh really, you’re going all the way to the dome at 8,000? The FUCK you are! Two days ago you standing on the beaches of Narragansett with all that nice, heavy thick O2 in the air...none of that is up here buddy!”

“Thump!” I just sat on the ground, sucking in air, trying to calm down and I did somewhat eventually. I then sold this idea to myself, “That’s it, you’re going as far as you can. You go higher and you’ll fuck it up! Don’t be stupid! They charge thousands for rescues here! But I AM inside the crater! I am STANDING in it! I’m HERE!” I was 29 years old looking around at a past event I saw on TV when I was 18.

Not bad. I can claim it and own it.

Getting down wasn’t as bad. It can be a fast run/stumble/controlled fall down the side. I was hit again by another cloud burst of sleet but that too moved out as fast as it came in. By the time I got to the car, I was cold, wet and tired.

Sitting in the car with the heater blasting on me in late July, I was still sort of panting, but it was a “good” panting with a just reason, I was not used to being up so high. I would recover easily once I rested and due to something I accomplished.

I didn’t feel so accomplished lying on the bed at Sturdy, panting, with tubes in my arms the other day though. That’s the difference between 29 and 60 and before covid showed up.

I’ve found this with medical personnel who do this every day, they betray, on their faces, what they’re really thinking. When I had told the Dr about my trips into the mountains, he tried to seem positive with his best poker face but it failed. His face instead said, “No the fuck you're not, you’re not doing anything like that anymore. You’re old and you haven’t woken up to that fact yet…but you will when the reality hits. You’ll lose that stubborn illusion you carry with you that you’ll be young forever.” Seconds later, he verbally offered his advice in a more kinder way.

When it warms up one day, I can take a nice leisurely walk around the Duck Pond in Slater Park. Distance from my house? ½ mile. Elevation? 80 feet above sea level. Slope? None. Perhaps too I can sit on the bench, with my shocking white hair and feed the ducks.