Swimming in the Sink Page 5

  An international group of runners—the Hash Hound Harriers, who worked for the embassies in La Paz—invited me to join them on a run to the 18,000-foot peak of a nearby mountain. If I couldn’t run I could walk, or just have a hot drink with them at the base of the peak at a café at 16,000 feet. I knew I couldn’t run to 18,000 feet. I couldn’t run at sea level, but I wondered what it would feel like to walk to the 18,000-foot summit. I was unsure. I almost died on a swim in the Nile River from being sick and pushing too far when I should have climbed out of the water. I wondered if I would be pushing too far. But I had to go. I wanted to see what I’d never seen and experience as much as I could.

  Four Range Rovers climbed steep roads with sheer drops on either side and no guardrails. The local people had their vehicles blessed by a priest at the cathedral in Copacabana to keep them safe during their drives.

  When we arrived at the base of the peak, I climbed out of the Range Rover and took a deep breath. The air felt much thinner and it was hard to breathe.

  The Harriers started running up the mountain, and I stood in awe and watched them. They were amazing athletes. One soft-spoken confident man who had sandy blond hair and light blue eyes and looked rugged stayed behind and offered to climb with me to the summit. I looked at the mountain. It was steep and covered with loose shale. I doubted I could do it, and if I attempted it, I thought I would break my arm or neck on the descent. He encouraged me to try, and I knew I had to. I climbed one hundred meters and said I would much rather watch him run up the mountain.

  Within moments, he disappeared into the clouds and returned an hour later, ahead of his friends. They were amazing athletes.

  When I returned home, I wondered if the extra hemoglobin my body had produced to acclimate to altitude would help me perform better at sea level. I continued working on more challenging projects. In 2002, I swam in Antarctica from the icebreaker Orlova in 32 degree Fahrenheit water (0 degrees centigrade). An experienced support crew and three physicians monitored me during the swim. I reached the shores of Neko Harbor in twenty-five minutes, having swum 1.2 miles (1.9 kilometers). It was my most challenging swim, and it was satisfying to complete. But I wondered what more I could do. In 2007, I built on everything I had learned through all my years of swimming and exploring and swam across Disko Bay, Greenland. I jumped into 26.6 degree Fahrenheit water (–3 degrees centigrade) and swam four hundred meters. It was the most intense swim I ever attempted. The water was liquid ice, so cold I couldn’t put my face in for a second.

  It was so cold I never caught my breath. I swam faster than ever before in my life. And each second I was in the water I had to convince myself to keep swimming. I swam for five minutes and ten seconds. The water on the north side of Disko Bay warmed up to 28.8 degrees Fahrenheit (–1.8 degrees centigrade), but I didn’t notice any temperature change.

  I climbed out onto icy rocks and with help from my crew stood up and walked to a snowy area and put on my sweat suit and running shoes. I had succeeded but realized I had reached my limit. The human mind and body were amazingly strong and powerful, but they are also fragile.

  6

  NOVEMBER 2012—ALARMS

  Sandra Field, a longtime friend, had convinced me to join her and others in Costa Rica for Thanksgiving. It was the first Thanksgiving since my mom’s death, and Sandy said I needed to take a break. After university, I had moved back home to help my mom and dad. Their health was starting to fail. Sandy told me that I had been caring for my parents for twenty-five years. I hadn’t realized that it had been so long. One year blended into the next. Sandy said that in all those years she had never seen me take a vacation. I needed a break.

  She was right—I was worn out—and sad. She thought that being in Costa Rica would be fun. Once there, we went zip-lining, jumping off platforms attached to chicle trees twelve stories high and flying from tree to tree at thirty-five miles an hour. We went white-water rafting and were bounced, turned, spun in the rapids, and thrown into the river, but I didn’t feel a rush of adrenaline. I felt flat, exhausted, hot, and my feet were swollen.

  Dr. Ed Schlenk, a friend from Iowa who was a pathologist and nuclear medicine specialist, e-mailed me about his upcoming travels, and I wrote back. When he discovered that my feet were swollen, he said that swollen feet could signal a heart condition. He advised me to see a cardiologist.

  Back home, the swelling had subsided, and for a couple of weeks I thought I was better, but during the night my feet started swelling again, and my calves and hands cramped. The cramping was intense. I stretched my legs, drank water, ate bananas and oranges to replace electrolytes. That helped, but I was scared. My hands had never cramped before.

  I hadn’t been feeling well for about a month and I was starting to feel worse. Just before Christmas, the Simonelli family invited me to meet them at Disneyland to celebrate their daughter Liana’s thirteenth birthday.

  I was very tired, but I didn’t want to miss the celebration. The drive to Disneyland only took half an hour, but it took another half hour for me to walk the mile from my car in the parking lot to the restaurant. My heart was beating so fast, I had to stop every two hundred meters and rest until I had enough energy to resume walking.

  The Simonellis were waiting for me. We ordered quickly. Liana, the birthday girl, and Pearl, her younger sister, were so excited about going on the rides that they talked and ate fast. Liana asked if I would join them on the rides, and normally I would have loved to, but I imagined what it would feel like to be spun, dropped, and inverted, so I told them I would join them next time. As soon as they finished lunch the family raced to Downtown Disney, and I walked back to the car. Now I had to stop every hundred meters to catch my breath. I thought it was because I was under a lot of stress.

  That night I barely slept. I was restless, and my breathing was very fast. Suddenly I couldn’t control my hands; they were cramping so hard that my thumbs were touching my little fingers. The pain was so intense it took my breath away. I tried to pry one hand open with the other. I couldn’t do it. What was wrong with me? I was so in touch with my body, but I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

  I tried to think what to do. I knew the cause: it was too much stress. There were so many changes in my life, things I had no control over, and I didn’t know how to cope.

  The cramps in my hands were becoming more intense. I gritted my teeth and pressed my fingers down on the edge of a counter with all my weight. It stretched my hands, but when I stopped pressing down, they began cramping again.

  Maybe I was still dehydrated. I drank two more glasses of water. Maybe my electrolytes were still out of balance. I ate another orange. My calcium levels could be low. Drinking a glass of milk might make some difference.

  In an hour, the cramping stopped, but then I noticed that I was breathing fast and my heart was beating rapidly. Must be from the pain and worry, I thought, and placed my index finger on my carotid artery, near my throat. I felt my pulse, looked at my wristwatch, and counted the number of heartbeats in one minute. My normal rate was sixty beats per minute, but I counted more than one hundred.

  Normally my heartbeat felt strong and evenly paced, but now it felt weak and irregular. Something was wrong.

  Maybe the fluid retention was causing the leg cramps. Maybe it was something worse. Maybe my heart wasn’t pumping enough blood to supply oxygen to my muscles. Maybe they were starving for oxygen. Maybe there was something wrong with my heart. My heart was a muscle; what would happen if it didn’t get enough oxygen?

  I felt my pulse again. My heart was beating faster. I didn’t want to see a doctor. I had spent so much of my life seeing doctors with my parents. One or the other had been sick off and on for twenty-five years. My dad had cancer, an aneurism, a seven-bypass heart surgery, and blockages in his intestine that were always emergency situations. Caring for him was stressful for my mom. Her health declined. She fell and broke her hip, then her pelvis, then her wrist, and her heart started wearing out. She h
ad three leaky heart valves. They fought to recover from each setback. They fought for their lives. They did that over and over again, and they never gave up. Their minds and spirits were resilient, but their bodies were wearing out. I held their hands during the countless emergencies and the months of rehab, and tried to help them adjust to the world as their bodies declined. I loved them so much. They took great care of me when I was a child, supported me when I was a teenager, and gave me the confidence to realize that I could do anything I wanted with my life.

  They were always there for me and I needed to be there for them. But it was hard living with them, caring for them, watching one decline, then the other. I always felt a mixture of hope that they would recover again and sadness that they might not.

  One parent would be weak and coming out of the hospital, the other going in with an emergency. Sometimes I felt like I would break from the stress. I felt so alone. But I had Cody, the Labrador that I adopted from a neighbor. He was one of my best friends.

  Cody helped me take care of my parents, sat with my mom and dad when they were ill. He would lean against them and put his big yellow head in their laps. They would pet his head and they would relax. He looked at them with so much love in his eyes. And he took care of me. He picked up my shoes with his mouth to tell me it was time to go for a walk, and if I didn’t move, he would retrieve his leash and drop it in my lap. He loved to make me laugh. He would walk with his leash in his mouth through the neighborhood, and if a neighbor had an open door he would walk into their homes, and I would hear them say, “Oh, it’s Cody! Come on inside.”

  They would pet him and give him treats and he would smile and lean against them. He loved people and most dogs. He rarely barked but held his tail high and wagged it as he walked. He made me happy and I loved him.

  I didn’t want to see a doctor and begin that process of decline. I didn’t want to discover that something was wrong with me.

  I was sure the stress was getting to me. My dad died, my mom died, and then Cody died. I felt so sad and alone.

  With time my sadness and loneliness grew worse, not better. But my heart hurt and the pain intensified. It filled my entire being.

  I wanted to sit and do nothing, but I decided that I needed to get out of the house, change my focus. Working out would help me focus on my body, reduce my stress, and make me feel better. I did a two-hour workout in the gym. I tried to work out hard, but I felt too tired.

  When I returned home I didn’t feel any better. I sat on the couch. My breathing sounded strange, like I was wheezy, but I didn’t have allergies. I sounded like my mom a year before she died.

  But I still thought I was just feeling a lot of stress. A couple of months earlier, I had seen a doctor, and she did a physical so I could change health insurance companies. She ran the usual tests, and everything came back fine.

  But now something had changed. I missed my mom. My best friend. Everything in the house reminded me of her—her paintings, murals, and needlepoints. And there were holes in the house where her things had been removed. The chair where she sat to read was empty.

  There was a hole in my world that would never be filled. It was life, but it was hard. I was lucky I had good friends. They understood what I was going through.

  When my friend Laura King lost her mom she was so sad she couldn’t speak for almost a week. It was hard to comprehend the depths of her feelings until I experienced them myself.

  We had been friends for almost thirty years. We met when she wanted me to teach her children and her mom to swim. They became great swimmers and our families became close friends.

  She was a doctor, a dermatologist, and I decided to call her. She would know what to do. She was in the car with Charlie Nagurka, her fiancé. They were driving somewhere in Los Angeles. Charlie was also a doctor, an internist, and one of the warmest, most jovial, and positive people I had ever known.

  I told Laura I wasn’t feeling well.

  She said that was strange; I always felt well. She was concerned.

  I explained that my heart was beating fast and I mentioned that I had been in touch with Ed Schlenk, a retired radiologist who worked in Iowa and at Scripps in San Diego. He had recommended that I see a cardiologist, but I had waited to see if my symptoms would improve.

  Laura asked me to take my heart rate.

  It was more than one hundred beats per minute

  She asked me how long it had been beating that fast.

  For a couple of days, I said.

  “A couple days?” she asked with disbelief.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a long time,” she said. Her voice was tense.

  Charlie asked me what my normal heart rate was.

  Sixty beats per minute.

  He said I needed to see a cardiologist immediately. Laura agreed. She would call a friend to see if he could fit me in.

  I thanked her but said I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see a doctor. It made me nervous.

  She said she felt the same when she had to see a doctor.

  Charlie tried to put me at ease. He said that there were many things that could cause a rapid heartbeat and it might just be stress. It would be good for me to get checked. If my heart started beating faster or if I felt worse, I needed to go to the emergency room, and if I didn’t feel as if I could drive, I needed to call 911.

  I said if I could see someone Laura knew I would be okay. The last thing I wanted to do was to call the paramedics and go to the emergency room.

  Laura said she would call back as soon as she heard from the doctor.

  After we hung up, I decided to e-mail Ed Schlenk and let him know I was following up on his advice.

  He replied and said it should be checked but was probably a false alarm.

  I prayed it was a false alarm. I couldn’t deal with being sick.

  Laura reached the cardiologist’s office. There were three cardiologists she knew in the group. Her physician friends saw them for their heart problems. Dr. Milan Rawal was the youngest in the group. He was available at 3:00 p.m. Laura asked if I could wait that long.

  I said I would be fine, but I glanced at my watch. It was 10:00 a.m. Strange, once I accepted that I needed to go to the doctor, I wanted to get in right away and see what was wrong. I wondered if my heart could hold out.

  I told myself that I could get back to work. I was supposed to be writing my new book, but I couldn’t concentrate. I was supposed to have dinner with Cindy Palin, a good friend. She was going to make her grandmother’s Italian chicken recipe. I hoped I would be back from the doctor’s office in time. I was also supposed to meet another friend in the morning for a workout at the gym, but I wasn’t sure if I would make it.

  My goal was to get through this problem as soon as possible. I decided not to eat or drink anything in case I needed to have a test that required sedation. A procedure would have to be delayed if there was anything in my stomach.

  I watered the plants in case I had to stay in the hospital for a day or two. Everything was ready for my siblings and their families’ arrival. In four days we were to scatter my mom’s ashes and Cody’s. The house was clean, food was in the fridge, whatever was needed was there.

  My heart felt as if it was beating faster. I held my index finger on my carotid artery. It was beating a lot faster. Reading e-mails might distract me.

  There was one from Joe, my firefighter friend in Florida. His timing was perfect. He said it was time for me to take care of myself and I needed to take time to grieve. He comforted me by writing that my mom and Cody lived and shared their lives with me so that I would be happy.

  “The truth is that they never left you. They have just been transformed. They will be with you, a part of you, forever. And the ashes dispersals are a birthday party not a funeral.”

  I had told him that I was spending Christmas with the Simonelli family. He wrote that I couldn’t wait until Christmas to decompress. I needed to start as soon as I finished reading the e-mail. And I needed
to eat my favorite ice cream anytime I wanted. He told me to watch funny movies, fantasize about someone tickling me, get a massage or tell a dirty joke, and call him anytime I wanted to talk. We had been in touch by e-mail, but e-mail was limited.

  I imagined calling him as soon as I finished reading his message. He was strong, compact, and lean. He was a mountain climber. I was intrigued that a mountain climber could live in the flatlands of Florida and train to climb mountains. The mountain climbers I knew lived in Washington State, Montana, New Hampshire, and Colorado. They lived where they could climb and acclimate to altitude, and cold.

  Joe lives in Florida because of his job, but he was not limited by his environment. He figured out a way to simulate training at altitude. He ran sprints outdoors and simulated breathlessness, and ran long distances to build endurance. In the gym, he wore heavy boots on the StairMaster. Most people didn’t understand. They stared at him, laughed at him, and made fun of him, but he knew it was what he needed to climb mountains.

  He thought differently and saw possibilities when other people only saw impossibilities. He impressed me. He was methodical and thoughtful, and he had a lot of heart.

  I considered calling him, but I wasn’t feeling well and I didn’t want to whine on the phone.

  Joe e-mailed a second time that morning and asked how I was doing.

  I wrote that I had an appointment with a cardiologist in the afternoon.

  “Call me. Let’s just talk.” He e-mailed his phone number to make sure I had it.

  It seemed like he was on high alert.

  I needed to let him know I was okay. I called him and told him so.

  He laughed. He had a warm laugh that put me at ease.

  He asked questions: “Are you still living in the same house as you did years ago? Where are you in the house right now? What are you doing? Are you sitting up or lying down?”

  His questions seemed strange, so I asked, “Are you asking me this in case you think I need the paramedics?”

  “Yes, if the line goes dead, I know where to send them. It’s about being prepared,” he said.