Listen to Mike’s voice dispatch from the mountain (2MB mp3 file)

For more information about high-altitude pulmonary edema and its treatment visit the High Altitude Medicine Guide.

May 2, 2001

Hi this is Mike Chrisp giving a dispatch on the second of May, Wednesday. Just to bring you up to date on what’s been happening over the last few days. About five days ago Tim Boelter and myself came up from Advanced Base Camp. We’d been pretty wracked with coughs and colds and we’d been coughing and sputtering all the way up. But we actually came up to Intermediate Camp reasonably quickly. And then from Intermediate Camp straight up to ABC again fairly quickly. Tim was moving very, very fast. He was going very, very well. He took three hours. I took five hours.

The next day we went with very heavy packs -- all our personal gear, high-altitude sleeping bags, down suits, our food, etc. -- up to the North Col. I wasn’t going very well at all, but Tim absolutely shot up there in about three hours. I managed to get up there by about quarter passed two, and we got into the tent and straightaway got on a brew. We tried to boil snow which of course, as you know, you need to use a lot of snow -- around six times as much snow to make an equivalent amount of water. I was actually fairly out of it. Tim sort of mothered me all afternoon, and fed me drinks and soup. And we had settled in for a reasonably uncomfortable night.

Sometime during the night Tim started coughing and sputtering and hacking and his chest was hurting and he was having difficulty breathing. He’s fairly stubborn and eventually I managed to persuade him to take Diamox to try to help acclimatize. Diamox is actually renowned for helping with acclimatization. Eventually I managed to get 250 milligrams inside him and I think that helped to ease his breathing a little bit. But he continued to cough through the night and I was fairly worried. I nursed him through the night and we kept talking to each other trying to work out exactly what was going on. In the end I diagnosed that he probably had high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE).

The next step with that would have been to give him a dilation medicine. That would have dropped his blood pressure. We discussed that and decided that wasn’t a good option, particularly when the best thing to do would probably be to get down to Advanced Base Camp, and then maybe to evacuate down to Base Camp.

During the night we had a pretty tough time trying to console each other. And in the morning it took about two and a half hours to get any water from the snow. Tim was starting to cough and sputter and again I managed to get some more Diamox into him.

One of the Australian doctors up on the North Col came and we told him our tale of woe. He confirmed that fact that we probably had altitude pulmonary edema. Neil Hornett, who was also camped on the North Col overnight, and I decided to evacuate Tim. But Tim being frantic to get down as quickly as possible because of the seriousness of pulmonary edema took off like a scolded cat and went down the fixed ropes very, very fast. Neil and I actually had real trouble keeping up with him. Also we managed to get tangled up in a whole load of Sherpas making a carry up to the North Col. Unfortunately Neil lost a crampon half way down as well and that slowed us both down. By the time we got to the bottom of the fixed ropes Tim was right across the other side of the glacier, and he was obviously going OK.

Neil and I decided to come across the glacier together because none of the three of us had actually had anything really substantial to eat. We’d had a cup of water and a fig roll for breakfast, and that was it. And that really wasn’t substantial enough really to keep us going. We both, Neil and I, felt it in very bad form that the patient should actually arrive in Advanced Base Camp at least 45 minutes before his helpers.

By the time we arrived Tim was feeling a lot better. He’d had some fluids and he’d had something to eat. And he was actually looking a lot perkier than he was when he was on the North Col. And when we looked at him he actually looked so much better. He’s still got the cough, but he’s recovered quite substantially.

The decision at the moment is whether to stay here at Advanced Base Camp or whether to go down. I think we’re going to go down to Base Camp tomorrow and try and throw off these coughs, these sinus infections, whatever it is that we’ve both got and try and get rid of it before we come back up again.

Other than that, I have been doing some dentistry. I think Tim mentioned in his earlier dispatch that I saw a Russian about five days ago and had to remove a tooth for him. And this morning I’ve been working on an actually fairly famous international filmmaker, trying to patch him up to get him to keep going. He was in a little bit of discomfort, but I think he’ll pull through. All of these guys have really got to see somebody as soon as they get home. But it was a very entertaining experience actually working in the Australian Army Alpine tent surrounded by people who were just popping in and out. We had video cameras in our faces and just generally having a real laugh. But I think it’ll work out OK.

I’m signing off now.

Mike Chrisp
2001 British American Lightweight Everest Expedition