By the time Jesse Easterling staggered into an
emergency clinic on Mount Everest, he was almost incoherent.
Two days before the start of the summit season, when a clear weather window will send hundreds of climbers
scurrying up the south side of the mountain, it was a cold afternoon at Base Camp on May 17, 2009.
A stocky 27-year-old Seattle insurance salesman, Easterling, entered the clinic, a
small tent run by two physicians, wearing a T-shirt and talking gibberish.
What name is yours? asked Dr. Torrey Goodman, 53, a Hawaiian altitude specialist working on the mountain in her first season. Anything mumbled at Easterling. She inquired again. What name is yours? More gibberish; he was not able to stop fidgeting.
The arrival of Easterling frightened Goodman and the other doctor in the tent, Eric Johnson, a former president of the Wilderness Medical Society. A rash covered his arms. In Boise, Idaho, Johnson would later testify that Easterling had a "buffalo hump," referring to an odd deposit of fat on his stomach. He spent 30 minutes trying to get basic details from the doctors, but he couldn't concentrate. Why do I get so bloated? "He started to query. Why am I so fat?
"He was utterly confused ... Almost psychotic,' recalled Johnson in a deposition.
Finally, Easterling conveyed that with Asian Trekking, a Kathmandu-based outfitter known for cheap prices, he was an Everest rookie climbing, a complete expedition runs around $40,000, or $30,000 less than what top guiding outfits charge. Before his summit attempt, Easterling had just finished his last rotation on the mountain to acclimatize, making it to Camp III at 23,500 feet. There was something he mumbled about taking me for a
Immediately, the doctors sent a Sherpa to Easterling 's tent to retrieve any medicines he may have found. The doctors gasped when the Sherpa returned: it was holding a tray full of dexamethasone, also known as dex, a notorious anti-inflammatory steroid. In recent years, dex has become popular among mountaineers, prescribed to treat everything from tumors to asthma, because it can alleviate some of the effects of altitude sickness and high altitude cerebral edema (HACE), such as brain swelling, and because,
It will help climbers ascend rapidly if taken prophylactically. It may also have hazardous side effects when used to excess. 30 unopened vials of dex sat on the tray, more than Goodman stocked for a whole season to serve any climber on Everest. The Sherpa handed a bottle of pills to Goodman as well. It contained 90 doses of dexamethasone at one point. Now there were four in it.
When have you begun to take these? "Asked Goodman.
"In Lukla," Easterling said, referring to the tiny Nepalese village that is the point of departure for most trips to Everest and where he had arrived almost a month ago. Four weeks on dex, accompanied by a cold-turkey stoppage, Goodman and Johnson were horrified enough to shut down someone's adrenal system. For such an prolonged time prior to a summit attempt, no accomplished mountaineer can self-medicate.
Easterling would later testify that a three-day dose was prescribed by his doctor back in Seattle, Keith Tang, a native
of Cambodia who practiced medicine in the Cayman Islands, close to what Johnson would give an end-stage brain tumor patient.
He had sent his body into adrenal crisis and caused a psychotic breakdown when Easterling had
been spooked by his presence and stopped taking the steroid four days before crashing into Everest ER.
We realized immediately that
Jesse was in his life—
They called for a helicopter and, at a reduced dosage, they put Easterling back on the medication to control his adrenal system. It took two days, due to bad weather, to evacuate him. Almost a dozen times in that period, he returned to the Everest ER tent, a neurological train wreck. 'I'm too afraid to be alone,' he would say, crying. "I'm not able to sleep. What was happening to me?
Mr. Easterling was evacuated to Kathmandu on May 19. Johnson and Goodman both gave him the same directions before the helicopter took off, something they have never told another patient in their combined 50 years of experience. Easterling was told to find a decent lawyer and sue his doctor.
Easterling was vomiting half a
cup of blood that night.
He spent 12 days in a hospital
in Kathmandu, mainly in the intensive-care unit.
He was wailing from
extreme gastrointestinal bleeding in agony.
Easterling 's mother emailed the U.S. consulate
in Kathmandu, claiming he was in critical condition.
He finally got a transfusion
of blood, stabilized, and flew home.
Now, he says, thinking
back, "I got lucky."