belated anecdote
Oct. 2nd, 2005 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaeclecticI believe I mentioned that I would tell this story, and I haven't yet: Basically, through most of the trip I didn't sleep well, or enough. The camping part was particularly trying, since I have difficulty sleeping on the ground -- my arms and shoulders tend to fall asleep, waking up the rest of me -- and no, thermarest technology has not yet arrived at the point of eliminating this difficulty. Plus, between trying to stay hydrated, and intermittent diarhhea, there were a lot of nighttime baño runs.
However, my one really bad night was actually after the trek was over, when I would have thought I was as acclimated to the altitude as I could get. My best theory is that after being down to about 7,700 feet at Machu Picchu, my body was not well pleased at rapidly (by train) ascending back to 11,000 feet at Cusco.
In any event, back at the lovely hotel in Cusco, sleeping in a bed (yay!), I woke up after 2 hours of sleep (because I had to pee, of course) and then couldn't get back to sleep. You know how when you start to fall asleep, the first thing you do is start breathing more deeply? I felt like I couldn't get enough air into my lungs. Every time I would start to drift off, I would drift into a dream where I was hiking uphill and gasping for breath -- and then I would jolt awake because I really was gasping for breath. Needless to say, this was frightening as well as uncomfortable.
After about 2 hours, I was considering calling the tour guide or the hotel desk to ask for oxygen. But I decided to just give up on sleep for a while and read instead. After about 45 minutes, I was nodding off over the book, and concluded that sitting up was intrinsically better than lying flat on my back -- so I propped myself up on pillows and slept half reclining for a couple more hours.
The following night, I used that strategy from the start, and was OK -- but still and all, I was awfully glad to get back to sea level.
Also: the AM after my bad night, I was describing it to Jo Anne and Claudia (the other two single girls (yes, read in irony in that phrase) on the trip), and Jo Anne (one of two nurses in our crew) initially thought it was just anxiety, until I got to the part of explaining that propping myself up actually helped. However, when I described it to Jim, he knew exactly what I was talking about, as apparently he'd been feeling that way quite a lot of the time.
The moral of the story: appreciate the oxygen in your air!
However, my one really bad night was actually after the trek was over, when I would have thought I was as acclimated to the altitude as I could get. My best theory is that after being down to about 7,700 feet at Machu Picchu, my body was not well pleased at rapidly (by train) ascending back to 11,000 feet at Cusco.
In any event, back at the lovely hotel in Cusco, sleeping in a bed (yay!), I woke up after 2 hours of sleep (because I had to pee, of course) and then couldn't get back to sleep. You know how when you start to fall asleep, the first thing you do is start breathing more deeply? I felt like I couldn't get enough air into my lungs. Every time I would start to drift off, I would drift into a dream where I was hiking uphill and gasping for breath -- and then I would jolt awake because I really was gasping for breath. Needless to say, this was frightening as well as uncomfortable.
After about 2 hours, I was considering calling the tour guide or the hotel desk to ask for oxygen. But I decided to just give up on sleep for a while and read instead. After about 45 minutes, I was nodding off over the book, and concluded that sitting up was intrinsically better than lying flat on my back -- so I propped myself up on pillows and slept half reclining for a couple more hours.
The following night, I used that strategy from the start, and was OK -- but still and all, I was awfully glad to get back to sea level.
Also: the AM after my bad night, I was describing it to Jo Anne and Claudia (the other two single girls (yes, read in irony in that phrase) on the trip), and Jo Anne (one of two nurses in our crew) initially thought it was just anxiety, until I got to the part of explaining that propping myself up actually helped. However, when I described it to Jim, he knew exactly what I was talking about, as apparently he'd been feeling that way quite a lot of the time.
The moral of the story: appreciate the oxygen in your air!