American explorer Mark Dickey‘s go to to Türkiye was longer than he expected-and took a flip for the worst that he by no means noticed coming.
He was a part of a analysis group that headed into the Morca Cave, the third-deepest in Türkiye, positioned within the nation’s southern Mersin province.
Their mission was to map the underground system of the cave, a labyrinth of constricted passages and plunging vertical tunnels, positioned in a distant space some 2,200 meters (7,217 toes) above sea degree within the Taurus Mountains.
Dickey was about 1,040 meters (3,412 toes) contained in the cave on Sept. 3 when he fell critically unwell, struggling sudden gastrointestinal bleeding.
What adopted was what rescuers have since described as some of the difficult cave rescue missions ever accomplished. At least 200 rescuers from a number of international locations labored for days and eventually managed to get Dickey out a bit after midnight of Sept. 11.
“Logically, I was like, I’m probably going to die,” Dickey instructed Anadolu in a video interview from his hospital room in Mersin, hours earlier than he was discharged.
He had misplaced loads of blood by the point the primary rescuers reached him with remedy and blood baggage for a transfusion. That left him too frail to maneuver on his personal, flitting between bouts of consciousness.
“I really have no way of describing it … just a whole host of symptoms hit me all at once,” he mentioned.
“It was a pretty wild ride. Feeling loss of consciousness, that you have to throw up, that you have to go to the bathroom, that you’re getting hot flashes, cold flashes, that you’re tired, lethargic. All of these things kind of hitting you all simultaneously.”
Dickey’s expertise in a profession as a rescuer and caver proved crucial in his survival. He has been a cave rescue coach for over a decade and has a background within the fireplace service.
He knew that regardless of the misery, he needed to transfer and make it to a group member.
“You have to take the right actions at the right time. Right then, the necessary action was not to stop moving. So whether it’s hard or not, I finished climbing my way up to Jessica,” he mentioned, referring to his fiancee and fellow expedition member Jessica Van Ord.
She was the one who then made the climb out of the cave to alert authorities.
“I started telling her what I was feeling, what the symptoms were, and based on that, she would be able to take action. Even if I was unconscious, she would at least have an idea of what was going on,” he defined.
Dickey isn’t any stranger to caves and has been by his share of challenges over his profession.
But this was one thing he had by no means skilled and even imagined.
“This was a totally unknown medical problem. 100% unknown. So that’s what makes that so scary in itself,” he mentioned.
“If you fall and break a leg, you know you fell and you broke a leg. If you have a rock fall on your head, you know a rock fell on you. But an internal medical problem that you can’t see-that’s scary.”
With his life on the road, all of Dickey’s coaching and survival instincts kicked in arduous. He knew there was no room for feelings and that rational pondering was his key to survival.
“Emotions are going to cause you to make poor decisions. It was very rational logic. What are my signs? What are my symptoms? What’s happening? What decisions have to be made? What plans have to be made?” he mentioned.
Conflicting ideas raced by his thoughts, from pondering that there was no danger to his life to fearing absolutely the worst.
“It went like ‘I don’t think this is a life risk.’ ‘I’m pretty sure I’m okay.’ Rest. Get out of the cave myself,” he mentioned.
“Then it transitioned into, ‘Oh crap, this is a life risk. I need help. This is serious.’ Then it became ‘I’m probably going to die, but I’ll do my best not to.'”
Over time, it grew to become “harder and harder to talk,” mentioned Dickey.
“It was getting hard to count my pulse on my wrist. I was very close to going into shock. And mentally I knew that and I was maximizing my chance for success. But logically, I was like, I’m probably going to die.”
The 41-year-old caver was trapped for nearly 10 days as rescue groups charted a solution to ease him towards the floor.
Rescuers did get him medicines and different necessities throughout that point, however he couldn’t eat or drink all through.
“In the process of receiving the medications and the medical help … every single day that went by, I’m not eating. I’m not drinking. So … I had 10 sequential days of no food whatsoever,” he mentioned.
“They did start providing some IV-based nutrition, but IV nutrition is a very significant caloric deficit. So my body started consuming its own fat, its own muscles. It started consuming itself to generate energy … On top of that, my stomach was at risk at all times … So you had to be very, very careful … You didn’t want it to rupture.”
For Dickey, it’s clear that he owes his life to the authorities and courageous volunteers who put themselves on the road for him.
That gratitude was clear to see on his face as he described the second he first made it out.
“That felt amazing. I popped up and there are all these people waiting for me, and a lot of them I knew,” he mentioned.
“It wasn’t just like, here’s all these strangers, all these random rescuers, all these random people that had saved me. A huge amount of these people were friends. Huge amount of these people are like part of the caver family … The entire rescue, that was family saving me. That felt good.”
The Turkish authorities’s position was ‘insanely crucial,” he mentioned.
“When Jessica got out of that cave, contacted the Turkish government and said we need medical supplies, she got them and she got them in time to save my life,” he continued.
“The Turkish government’s rapid response is what saved my life, period.”
Despite his brush with dying, Dickey’s spirit of journey is as sturdy as ever and he’s raring to get again into the sphere. More vital for him in the mean time, although, is for folks to grasp that “this was a fluke medical issue.”
“This is not representative of the dangers of caves or caving. Caving is actually one of the safer sports out there,” he emphasised.
“There are international expeditions going on every single year in countless locations. Rescues are exceptionally rare.”
Source: www.anews.com.tr
