Do you know where Mt. Washington is?
Washington?
Alaska?
It's in New Hampshire. It looks like a hump next to other humps. It's the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at 6,288 feet.
Which by Colorado standards is not very high. But then, that's measured from sea-level and Colorado mountains begin at 1 mile altitude. The mountain is known for weather extremes.
A group of hikers set out including an eighty-year-old man. The old man lagged behind the two younger hikers who left him behind on the trail. These two hikers then took another path down so there was no chance of them encountering the old man that they left behind.
When the two hikers got to a station they alerted responsible people that the old man is still up on the mountain. The search went on through the night.
They found the man alive. Curled into fetal position. The weather had become seriously threatening. He was too cold to speak. He could not walk.
The rescuers had to carry the man nearly two miles. He was put into an ambulance and is recovering without apparent serious or permanent injury.
The two healthy hikers made two hiking-mistakes. They left the old man alone and they took a separate trail down. This has the hiking community angry. (I didn't know there there is a hiking community, but whatever, people are angry.)
Fish and Games is weighing charges against the family that left the hiker behind.
Details at Union Leader.
One of my landlords was quite old, over eight-eight, I believe and he prided himself on the miles that he walked everyday. He walked all the time all over the place. When I was recovering from immobility he inspired me to try harder.
The week that he died was like all of that never counted. His legs curled up as mine had. In one week he was immobile and dead.
Joe was about eight-five and he hiked the Arizona and California hills continuously. He was a very strong hiker. Something happened with his shoulder, then something else, then one thing after another, his eye was patched, the next week he was dead.
Dr. Fred died while hiking. He was also quite old, but not in his eighties. He was stronger than I am. His death was due to trying to keep up with hikers much younger than himself. He was taking arthritis medication that has some wild side effects. His death made all of us angry. He was a doctor. He should have known better. But he also had ego the size of Montana.
I must keep all this in mind as I am huffing and puffing and struggling with various pain here and there by walking only a few blocks. From the inside it seems it's just more of the same daily struggle a little more intense one day to the next, while in reality I could be actually dying. That could account for the alarm that comes across in the urgency of GPs and specialists.
My GP contacted a specialist who told him to tell me to go to emergency immediately for scanning and I'm all, "N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, don't make me go to emergency."
With a plea that clear and heavy how could he refuse?
"Why not?"
"Because I'll go in for an emergency scan. They'll move me and hold me in a tiny room for 4 hours as they organize, then enter the room en mass and insist that I allow myself to be checked in for further tests, then they have me as prisoner for three days. I languish with a needle in my arm, if not both arms. My comfort is irrelevant. I cannot move for three days. I'll be subjected to a million unrelated things, such as interrogations into my private life and way of living, questions that have nothing whatsoever to do with my immediate thing, such as do I shower or bathe and how many time a week, layers and layers of hospital concerns, and zero concern for my comfort or emotional wellbeing. Fitted with bogus canes or equipment, and sent on my way. Then the real discomfort of endless billing and impenetrable statements back and forth between providers and insurers for the next full year as the items are sorted, and I'm out to the tune of a few more thousand dollars. My experience with hospitals is depressing. My goal is to never go in one."
So I must do a ton of other shit instead.
Today I hand another blood draw. And I must say, the experience was awesome. Nothing unpleasant about it. Saturday, the place is nearby, I was the only one there at a place that was architecturally excellent. Part museum, actually. All computerized. I walked up to a terminal, entered simple straightforward information, and boom, a pleasant young lady came out and I walked back with her and she drew my blood.
We had a very nice time together. Very personable.
"Thank you. For your manner is kind and gentle Painless. My whole experience with you is a pleasure."
"Thank you for telling me that. You just made my whole day."
And now on Monday I must drive to Parker in the morning for scans. While there are hospitals very nearby all around right where I live. Believe me, I'd much rather drive fifty miles then merely hop over to a hospital. Maybe I'm being irrational. But like I say, my experience with hospitals and with emergency rooms particularly is not happy. So I'll drive instead.
8 comments:
In the old days, you got strung up for that.
If I recall correctly, when we visitied Mt. Washington, you were supposed to position your sun visor a certain way to indicate you didn't want a bumper sticker. Otherwise, a complimentary one was attached.
Like this one.
Maps of it look like it is loaded with ski runs.
Highest wind speed ever recorded in US. 231 mph.
I worked a summer w/ a drilling crew. We would travel to quarries throughout New England, drill and then dynamite. We worked a job in NH not far from Mount Washington. We were going to drive up the mountain but decided to get drunk in the motel.
I had contempt when I climbed it back in my callow youth (as opposed to my callow middle age). I'm from the west coast and had summitted "real" mountains but Mt. Washington is no joke!
Pardonnez, MOUNT Washington.
Forgot about that.
I know where it is, although I have never been there. I worked with a guy in California who lived in Boulder, before and after his time in CA. We were in the same bicycle club and that guy was a cycling monster. Never saw anyone who could ride like he did. He rode that road in CO that averages over 10,000' in elevation. He would hop on his bike and ride from the Bay Area to Yosemite. When he moved back to CO from CA he rode his bike - went north, visited all the National Parks such as Crater Lake and Glacier, then down to Boulder. As you might well imagine he was a string bean - we called him the man with no draft. You could drop in behind him in a paceline and gain no advantage whatsoever. But he could and did ride hundreds of miles without tiring.
And to hear him tell it when he tried training with the U.S. National cycling team they dropped him like a stone. I can't even imagine how fast those guys are.
But back to our story - in the '90s we were supposed to meet up at Mt. Washington and ride our bikes up the hill. Seemed reasonable to me, as I had already climbed Mt. Mitchell, which is taller, but as sometimes happens, life got in the way. I got divorced, impoverished, became unemployed, and while I kept riding, long road trips were no longer an option for me. So it goes.
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