home

Dr Sneh's diary: Stuck in transit

Having battled the raw climate of the Icelandic mountains, Dr Sneh Khemka enjoys a brief moment of tranquillity in a Bangkok airport lounge before the Vietnam mission kicks off

 

Airport lounges are interesting places. Almost like a comfortable limbo, they occupy that space in between anticipation and arrival, ensuring that on-edge passengers are kept as calm as possible, while still lacking in any degree of charm.

And so I find myself in such a place. Bangkok airport: my watch indicating mid afternoon, my body telling me early morning. In fact, my principle state is one of exhaustion, partly exacerbated by long flying hours and hectic transits, but mostly from the last week spent in Iceland.

As you may have seen from the last post, I had a six-day trek through the mountains of southern Iceland as preparation for my current project in Vietnam - and what a preparation it was. The week brought us a combination of sunshine, monster trucks, blizzards, ice wine and undiagnosable knee injuries.

Working as an expedition medic, I support charities that raise money by sending participants off on adventurous, difficult and challenging trips that require endurance and grit. My being there not only offers the participants psychological reassurance, but can turn out to be very useful when the going gets tough.

Mountain rescue

And the going did get tough. Walking roughly 20 kilometres a day through old lava flows, across fast flowing rivers and through treacherous ice fields is demanding. Having Iceland throw its worst weather at you at the same time is another matter altogether.

Day three of the trek saw the temperatures drop to minus 20 degrees celcius with wind chill, visibility down to a few metres and gusts that managed to sweep all of us off our feet, even those with the lowest centres of gravity. Reaching a rescue hut on the mountain offered us some respite, but it was at this point that one of the participants went down.

A young woman on the expedition suffered from early hypothermia, low blood sugar and considerable dehydration. After an urgent resuscitation, I called one of the rescue mountain vehicles (which resemble monster trucks with their tractor-dimension wheel bases) to take her and three of the other most vulnerable down the mountain.

Day five involved brief abseiling down some rocky outcrops before negotiating a precarious canyon crossing. This also became a point of some logistical and medical difficulty as one of the walkers got a foot and knee forcefully twisted in opposite directions by two large boulders. Cue the monster truck again.

New adventure, new temperature

So now that I have moved on from the chilly climes of this rather majestically desolate island, I can appreciate it for what it is: raw, bleak, unpredictable and an awesome place.

Temperatures here in Bangkok are somewhere in the mid-30s, and it is similar in Hanoi, my next destination. I’m feeling some anxiety about the next stop - joining a group of relative strangers, trekking to unknown villages, and mostly not knowing what medical issues will be afflicting those I will be treating.

Am I prepared enough? Do I have enough supplies? Will I be able to treat what I diagnose, or just observe it? Will people want to come and see us? Will our collective Western practicing techniques be irrelevant in this remote corner of the globe? Questions and apprehensions that I’m sure will see an answer in the forthcoming days.

My immediate challenge, however, is to navigate the security control with my bag full of medicines and supplies. A full and desperate explanation of the purpose of my trip just about got me through Heathrow airport, and I just hope the Thai authorities are as understanding.

Next steps