Day 4 - Not exactly what I had in mind....

     I slept slightly better - by which I mean I didn't look at my watch for 4 hours straight - so even though I felt I was awake most of the time, perhaps I wasn't. My hip was hurting and prevented me from lying on either side so I got another one hour on my stomach and I actually dreamed. A really weird dream about going to a tailors to have a skirt's kick pleat repaired - ?????
     I had an Eatmore bar and a piece of jam toast for breakfast - still nauseaous but at least I no longer feel like I need to throw up.
     Walk today was billed as 4 to 4 and a half hours. It took us four hours. We walked up a (sometimes) gradual wide open path with the mountain on our right and the sun on our left. At times the mountain looked like it was made out of chocolate.

     The walking was fantastic again - sometimes we were basically climbing up large rocks - but it was very meditative and I loved it!

     We crested a ridge and could see the camp which is very heartening - but due to the fact that we were on a ridge and had to walk a bit more up and then laterally quite a ways - the camp was actually quite far away. This is very disheartening. I really noticed I ran out of steam in the last half an hour but attributed this to the need for some food and a warm drink.

     Our tent wasn't set up when we got into camp and it started to mist over and become quite windy. I put on two more layers of clothes and had a bit of rest on the steps of the very, very smelly bathrooms. I was tired and sitting down wind, and since it was an actual level place to sit, I didn't move.

     Lunch was served after a bit in a hail storm! Macaroni and vegetable stew, no soup, which had become my favorite part of the meal.
     We had a great moment when two of our crew, A & C, got their luggage back. They had sky checked their Kili bags in London and didn't get them back in Addis Abbaba. They have been climbing the mountain with borrowed everything and not one complaint out of them! Their bags arrived here at Kibo huts about the time A & C did. A porter had spent two days hauling them up from the base of the mountain. All of us were so happy they finally had their own clothing. A made us all smell how clean his shirt was - which made us all a bit jealous as we don't have anything clean left.
     My HAC (high altitude cough) started on day 2 with just an occasional cough during the night or at other odd times. HAC is a dry cough that affects people at altitude, is irritating but of no real significance. My cough had been getting a bit worse and instead of a single cough, it was three or four coughs together and more frequently.Today I was having longer bouts - no problem when we were walking, but when we stopped I would bark a bit.
     At lunch, reaching for the hot water set off a bout and standing up from the toilet caused another. When I lay down for our mandatory afternoon nap the coughs started coming and didn't stop. After about 20 minutes of this I was having some expiratory wheezes and I progressively got worse until it was a lot of work just to exhale. I took a hit of Helen's Ventolin which helped almost immediately but only for about 2 minutes. I was now sitting up and still fighting to exhale. M went for the head guide at this point.
     I was still pink and my heart rate was in the 80s, so I was certainly in no immediate danger but it was steadily becoming much harder to breathe. My lungs were very wet sounding and I got a pounding headache - which may have been from the coughing or another sign of acute mountain sickness.
     The head guide and the ranger came and decided I needed to go down the mountain. Immediate descent from altitude is the cure for HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema) but first they gave me the nicest gift ever - a bottle of oxygen. I don't know what they had planned to set the flow rate at but M make them set it at 4L/min - oh sweet bliss! I immediately noticed that although it wasn't much easier to exhale I felt like I was getting a lot more oxygen. My fantastic friends packed all my gear, which of course was spread all over my portion of the tent in preparation for summit night.
     Two of the guides walked me out to the evacuation stretcher - which is a flat metal bed with metal railings over a single wheel.

They zipped me and my lovely friend the oxygen bottle into my sleeping bag and strapped me in. M had to insist they send the oxygen with me, which they were very reluctant to do - I later learned they had already evacuated 4 men that day with breathing problems and were running short of oxygen at the camp.

     The wind was blowing ferociously and it was raining and hailing. I said my goodbyes to M and Helen and we started down the hill. My entourage included my guide, my cook, the ranger and 6 other guys. They basically set off at a run with one guy in front, one on each side and one in the back. The first part was a steep descent on a wide path with only small pebbles. It was very disconcerting to be able to only see the sky and yet know you are going rapidly down a hill. When they reached the bottom of the hill they slowed to a more reasonable pace. After a while the guys would change positions - keep in mind these guys are also carrying backpacks with their gear.
     After about 20 minutes I started to feel better and stopped coughing. Another half hour after that Ranger Jackson turned off my oxygen. I was feeling pretty good and then they went up a hill. I started to feel the pressured breathing again but the steepness of the hill had me quite head down and almost immediately I was back fightint to exhale and coughing. The driver stopped and they stood me up in the stretcher and reapplied the oxygen - which I continued on for quite a while afterwards.
     My kakas (brothers in Swahili) stopped when they got to the helicopter landing pad so I could use the bathroom (very considerate of them since I really had to go but was not looking forward to them standing around while I used nature's bathroom). We had a short break, I fed them some of my summit candy and then we continued on.
     The path was horribly rocky and it was very hard for those strong men to get the stretcher over many of the rocks in the path. It would have taken me days to walk down that road in my condition. It took us just over an hour (by comparison it took my companions between 4 and 7 hours to cover the same ground the next day) to get to Horombo huts.
     We arrived just before dark and I was given a bed in a hut - which had 6 bunk beds on two levels, no heat, but did have electricity and a level bed. The bathroom building had running cold water, 3 stalls (one of which was an actual sit down toilet) and electricity.
     Ranger Jackson and Yusef (my guide) continued to check in on me through the evening.

The chef brought me a tureen of soup and five pieces of toast for supper (at my request - he wanted to make me something more substantial). I did my best to eat it all but I only managed about half of the soup which made my guardians very unhappy.
     Something as simple as climbing into or out of the top bunk (about mid torso level) leaves me breathless and possibly coughing. Everyone has assured me I will be all right and I believe them.
     I am drinking Milo laced with lots of sugar and then will be turning out the lights. My friends will be sleeping right now and be getting up around 10 to start their summit push around 11 pm. I wish I was with them.