HeroicStories

Restoring faith in humanity - one story at a time

Restoring Faith in Humanity...
One Story at a Time.
  • Home
  • Samples
    • Call Me Grandpa
    • Hurting Hands
    • Marshmallows and White Hoods
    • Secondhand Sight
    • When We Woke
  • Podcast
  • FAQ
    • Why Are All The Stories Old?
    • How Can I Help?
    • How do I change my email address?
    • I Didn’t Get The Confirmation Email for my Subscription
    • I missed an issue, can you resend it?
    • Can I Link to a HeroicStories Story?
    • May I re-publish this HeroicStories story?
    • Unsubscribe me!
    • Why did I stop getting HeroicStories?
    • More…
  • Submissions
  • Books
  • About
    • Our Manifesto
    • The HeroicStories Podcast
    • Comments
    • Story Submissions
    • The HeroicStories Team
    • Contact
«
»

The Flatlander

By Tom Garvey
New York, New York, USA

The Flatlander

A few years ago, I was hiking with two doctors in the Himalayas. Pheriche is a tiny village on the way to Everest in the middle of a huge glacial morraine at 14,000 feet. There, we found a small crowd of trekkers surrounding a Nepali man. He lay on the ground near death — foaming at the mouth, twitching, and moaning, his eyes turned up into his head. Some Malaysian trekkers were giving him oxygen from a tank. My companions set to work on him immediately and were soon joined by a doctor from Kathmandu who was traveling with another group of American trekkers.

The man on the ground was in the end stages of altitude sickness. He was a lowland Nepali who had gone up to Everest Base Camp to sell things to the climbers and had ascended too quickly. When he got sick, concerned Sherpas carried him down to Pheriche where there is a mountain-climbers’ clinic.

The clinic was closed for the off-season, but the caretaker unlocked it. Inside, one of my companions found a Gamow bag. It looks like a giant duffle bag. With the patient inside, it is inflated and ventilated by constant operation of a foot pump. The pressure inside simulates a lower altitude. They placed the lowlander inside the bag.

The little clinic was packed with concerned people — twelve Malaysians, six or seven Sherpa porters, some townspeople including the caretaker, a young man from Hong Kong, the other doctor, and a police officer from Kathmandu who was also traveling with the four other Americans. The doctors were pessimistic. To have any chance of survival, the lowlander would have to stay in the bag for many hours. The non-doctors chose shifts to pump the bag overnight. My two companions each took half the night to administer medical care.

I awoke at 5:00 a.m. for my shift. I found one of my companions sitting quietly with her patient who was out of the bag and breathing from an oxygen mask. Early in the morning, he had regained full consciousness and could not stand to stay inside the bag any longer. He was out of the woods.

After sunrise, we all contributed to pay some porters to carry the man to a hospital and to compensate him for the belongings he had left behind at the Base Camp. The last we saw of the lowlander, he was in a basket on the strong back of a porter who was starting the long trip at a sprint down the rubble-strewn valley. He arrived safely at the hospital, and the doctors there said he would be fine.

It was a privilege to see so many heroes from all over the world come together to save the life of a stranger.

Originally published as HeroicStories #33 on July 17, 1999
Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:01 — 3.8MB)

Filed Under: HeroicStories

line

Note: HeroicStories aims to be a place of positive energy in what sometimes feels like an increasingly negative world. Our goal is to highlight good things done by good people that make the world a better place.

To that end your comments are not only welcome but encouraged. However, comments that simply find fault or otherwise complain about some aspect of a story will not be published. There's simply no need to find fault here - there are plenty of places on the internet for those discussions if you really feel the need to go negative.

Instead, look for the good. It really is everywhere.

line

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 

Receive your FREE copies of 

HeroicStories starting now! 

 We respect your email privacy.

Subscriber Counter

 

Most Recent Stories:

  • He Chooses to Do
  • The Man Who Cares
  • Without Regret
  • I Want Performance
  • In an Instant

Most Popular Stories:

  • Samples A few examples of what you'll find in HeroicStories: ...
  • Unexpected Return A missing cell phone is unexpectedly returned in the Ho...
  • The Amazing Doctor When a baby is born with multiple problems one amazing...
  • One Person Can Make A Difference A famous star steps up to help entertain some rambuncti...
  • Call Me Grandpa by Rick Norton California, USA Dad's life seemed ty...

Archives:

Site Search

© Copyright 2021 HeroicStories · All Rights Reserved - No part of this website may be republished without written consent of the publisher.

HeroicStories is a publication of, and webhosting and mailing services are provided by, Puget Sound Software, LLC and Ask Leo!