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Episode 054: A Summit A Day Keeps The Doctor In Pay

Posted by Jon Miller on Aug 1, 2007 in All Podcast Episodes, Bonus Episodes, Season 1, 2003 Everest Expedition | Comments Off on Episode 054: A Summit A Day Keeps The Doctor In Pay

Chronic Freezing. After we had caught up with Ben for a bit, Doktor Dima from the St Petersburg team came over for an examination of Ben’s feet.

On summit day, Ben had tied one of his boots just ever so slightly too tight and that’s all it took to cause some frostbite damage. While he was climbing, the only seriously cold part of his body were his foot and it’s toes. Apparently the tight boot was cutting off some circulation.

But really, what can you do up there if you’ve improperly tied a boot. It’s not like you can take the boot off and re-tie it when your in high winds at 28,000 feet.

Immediately after Ben took off his sock in our tent Dima said that the purple discoloration of Ben’s toes was NOT frostbite. IT was what he described as “chronic freezing” much like what soldiers would experience in the trenches during WWI.

I guess our climbers did fight a battle on summit day after all.

Jon Miller

Total Running Time: 21:53

Bonus Episode, “Frostbite”

As promised in the podcast this week, I’ve uploaded a bonus video showing Dima treating a Moscow climber who returned with some Fourth degree frostbite. This means that the badly frostbitten parts of his fingers and toes will eventually need to be amputated.

I though it would be good to make this video available, but parts of it are slightly difficult to watch, so it’s only available here on the website.

Just click below to watch it in your browser, or download it to your computer.

Jon