Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance Read Free Page A

care of the villagers had pleased me more. I was interested in the earth’s extremes, but succeeding at extreme medicine had been the higher summit.
    When I returned to New York, I was relieved to find that my hospital supervisors, though they couldn’t admit it officially, seemedto admire what I had done. Only a token punishment was imposed for my absence. Even had the consequences been more severe, however, I knew beyond question that I had made the right decision. I was determined to open even wider the door to that other world.
    My exploits in Peru came to the attention of The Explorers Club in New York, and not long after my return I was invited to join that venerable group of seasoned world explorers. For my first meeting I was asked to come with one good idea. Knowing that its membership must possess a unique and wide-ranging collection of medical experiences, I suggested that someone first collect and then synthesize the information, to create a fund of knowledge on medicine in extreme environments. The idea met with approval and, as often happens to someone with an idea at a meeting, I was unanimously assigned the task of bringing it about.
    At first it seemed presumptuous that a specialist in microsurgery such as myself should aspire to become an expert on extreme medicine. I felt like an outsider looking in. As I delved into medical journals, however, I found that there were few articles to read; fewer still were worth clipping and underlining. What little information existed was often vague, impractical, or contradictory. No doctor, I realized, could truly master such a disparate and random collection of far-flung maladies, but, within the Club, I was very quickly perceived as the repository and the source for information.
    My Explorers Club comrades were eager to share their experiences with me, and I soon had a collection of practical advice on treating medical problems in places and settings I never could have imagined. Perhaps I really did have a unique position from which to practice extreme medicine. Explorers heading for every part of the globe routinely began coming to me for advice, often coupled with invitations to join their expeditions. For someone who a year earlier didn’t even personally know a “real” explorer, every offer seemed too good to refuse but by this time I had left the hospital and was in solo private practice. No doctor I knew of crossed routinely between the worlds of exploration and medicine, and there are good reasons why. Setting up a practice involves risk and investment. I was proposing to be away for long periods of time. That would mean a loss of continuity formy referring doctors, not to mention a loss of income. The effect on my practice would be unpredictable, but taking risks and facing the unknown are what explorers are supposed to do. The experiences would be worth far more than any acquisitions.
    So I became a medical explorer, stepping out into the most extreme environments in the world eager to confront unexpected challenges. I paddled through the Amazon in a dugout canoe. Crossing the Arctic tundra, I tried to remember exactly how I was to record the migration route of a polar bear that was just then banging its lethal paw against the steel-reinforced window of my buggy. I had to stop taking notes for a fish survey while scuba diving in the Galapagos Islands when a shoal of hammerhead sharks passing above me obscured my light. On the Antarctic plateau, in a whiteout so severe I couldn’t see my feet, I made my way back to my snowmobile only by managing to follow voice cues from the driver.
    Wherever I was and whatever the circumstances, I was always the doctor, expected to treat whatever injury, or
insult,
a hostile environment might inflict on a fellow traveler—from frostbite to snake bite. If I didn’t know what to do, I would rely on local lore or improvise. I took my expedition work very seriously and after a few years, wasn’t quite sure anymore which of