Our research days were limited, however, and in order to maximize them we pushed ourselves to work despite feeling short of breath simply from bending over or walking briskly for a few feet in this environment. The medical equipment didn t fare well in this environment either. There had been an eight-month drought in this area of Nepal, and at the lower elevations, high winds kicked up dust. Even in our medical tents we found our microscopes and ultrasound machines covered in particulate yak dung. Setting up the equipment and getting it to work took ten times as long as at sea level cable connections were dirty, and the increasingly colder temperatures were inhospitable to many machines.
Cardiac monitoring leads don t stick well to dirty skin.
What worked so well at 200 feet became finicky and even ornery at 17,500 feet. Our daily teleconferences back to Yale were a technological treat. During the five weeks, our teleconsults covered the diverse fields of pulmonary medicine, endocrine, ophthalmology, and orthopaedics. Taking a break from data collection, I poked my head into the medical tent, where a young Nepalese woman was pointing to the area of her abdominal pain. As I watched and listened to her, I felt a sharp slap on my behind.