Date: 2004-07-20
From: Seth Warner Shelter

To: Bennington VT, Rt 9
Miles today: 11.5
Weather: light rain

At least the sun was shining through the dripping trees in the morning. There was a cool crisp freshness in the air that never seemed to happen down south on the trail. Maybe it had been a poor night¢s sleep but I was ready for the day. In fact I got out ahead of most of the gang including Buick. With all the people last night we'd had precious little time to talk but at least I was able to express my concern for the tough times he had been through since our parting in New York. I was looking forward to catching up on our travels as we hiked the trail in the days to come. The Crash:It was almost 10am. My boots were dancing from boulder to root to rock in a sort of subconsciously choreographed ballet of mud avoidance. This sort of thing came as second nature to me and barely slowed me down. All of a sudden, that was no longer the case. I was slowing down. About then Buick caught up to me. He asked how I was doing. I told him I was moving kind of slow but would see him later. He blew right by as expected.Things got worse for me quickly. Navigation was becoming a problem. Just placing one foot in front of the next required vast concentration and effort. There was a head ache too. Just sit down was the thought in my head. But no, there was a shelter coming soon. Sure, stop there and get a snack. Well, it took a while at this pace but the shelter came into view. This was the typical Green Mountain Club shelter design. It was a lean-to with double decker, double wide bunks on either side of a central table. It was very familiar from my hike of the Long Trail back in 1997 & 98. This was Congdon Shelter. I simply took my pack off, pulled out the pad, opened the valve, pulled out the sleeping bag, unstuffed it and threw it all on the upper right bunk. Then it was off with the boots and into the bag. It seemed the lymph nodes in my groin were quite swollen too. The headache made getting to sleep tough but in time sleep did come. The next thing I recall was a bunch of folks showing up. These were the folks that had shared the shelter with me last night. I didn't ever say hello. They hung around out front for a bit talking till they had all regrouped. Then they moved on leaving me to sleep some more.Around 2pm after a good 3 hours of sleep, I woke feeling just fine. After some lunch I packed up and headed out. How strange. What was that all about?The Second Crash:The next few miles were just fine. It was a nice hiking day too. Then on the approach to Harmon Hill the headache came back. Boo hiss. The descent to the pass at VT Route 9 was a nice steep one with lots of rock and rock stairs. This is great for rock hopping, my forte. I can fly down this stuff, but not today. Once again there is enormous difficulty in placing my feet and keeping my balance. The headache is getting really intense and I'm getting really hot and sweaty. Thoughts are racing through my head. Here's how they went:Sure it's a 1000 foot descent but come on, that's nothing for me. Why is it suddenly so hot and on the way down. This is supposed to be the easy part. It's all most 5 in the evening. Things should be cooling off. Wait a minute. I must have a fever. Sure. Oh no. That's not good. It's another thousand foot climb on the other side of the pass. I must be sick. What if this happens again in the morning. I've got to see a doctor. This isn't right. I can hardly walk. I may have to get off the trail. No. This is no good.As the road came into view, a truck stopped and picked up some hikers then pulled away. Running to catch it was out of the question. Some others had just been dropped off and were getting their stuff together. As I staggered out of the trees they told me with some concern that I had just missed a ride. I just crossed the road and put my thumb out. Before long a pickup came to a near sliding stop. A guy stuck his head out the window and told me to hop in the bed. I did and he tore out. The guy in the passenger seat stuck he head through the window in the back of the cab and asked where I was going. My reply was simply, I need to see a doctor. He said they were in a real hurry, so they couldn't drop me at the hospital, but that they could drop me at the center of town. It was just a few more blocks to the hospital. Just follow the blue signs he said. These guys were in construction. The driver had thru-hiked a long time ago and he liked to help out by giving thru-hikers rides. He had given a couple of broke, starving thru-hikers some temporary work earlier this summer. That was cool. People are good. Being just after 5pm now, there was actually a small line of traffic at the light at the center of town, Bennington, VT that is. We turned right on a small street before getting caught in the traffic and then cut thru some parking lots. They dropped me off on US-7, the main street through town and pointed me toward the blue signs and the hospital. I was most grateful and began to walk.Soon a blue sign came into view. In no time at all exhaustion swept over me again. The thought of hitching came to mind but this was in town with parked cars lining the road and besides the turn was just a couple of block up. This was silly. Hitching would have meant stepping off the sidewalk to the other side of the parked cars. There would then be the distinct possibility of collapsing and getting run over.The blue hospital sign pointed up a pleasant enough street to the right. It was lined with nice homes with well kept lawns. The road wasn't long, maybe 2 blocks, but to me it appeared to fade away into infinity. I was hot and so exhausted I just wanted to sit down and cry, like a little kid. The going was slow but finally the road reached a ¢T¢ intersection. Across the way was a grass covered hill side and there sat the hospital on top. In my desperation it was now time for a decision. Places like this are designed for car access not foot access. The road appeared to loop around to the left. A walk up the lawn would surely be shorter but would it lead to the appropriate door. Where was the walk way. Would I have the energy. My brain was hurt and the decision came way to slowly. In the end the road walk won out.At the door to the hospital there was a sign that read something like, ¢If you have a fever, tell the admitting nurse at once.¢ Almost certainly having a fever, that's what I did. She told me to sit over there indicating some chairs by the windows. I was prepared for a long wait but it wasn't. A nurse brought me into her office and began asking me questions and filling in the fields on a computer. In addition to the usual identification and insurance stuff she was asking lots of questions about my condition.My explanations included hiking the AT for two and a half months now with high mileage days, exhaustion, nausea, swollen lymph nodes and headaches which I don't normally get. The Lymph nodes made actual lumps on the surface of the skin by now. I also told her that I had been bitten by millions of mosquitoes back in Massachusetts and at least one deer tick. She asked several questions about the headache. Shortly she took me to an examining room. Of course it's still me, my pack, boots & gators.When the doctor came in he asked lots of the same questions of course which I answered pretty much the same way. He seemed overly concerned about the headache but for me it was the exhaustion and the lymph nodes that were most troubling. He never even checked the lymph nodes, which seemed strange. Oh well, he was the professional. He left me to get into a gown. I apologized for the muddy boots which were depositing dirt everywhere and for the stench that most certainly I brought to the place. He said don't worry.I got into the gown and lay down on the examining table. The nurse came in just as I was dozing off. That's not to say much time had passed, just that I was wiped. The headache had subsided by now. She took my vitals. Sure enough I had a temperature of a hundred and something. The actual number astonished me.The doctor came back and after some more questions said he wanted to give me some tests. Let's see, he wanted to do a blood test, a CAT scan to see if there was a brain tumor or something and a spinal tap to check for meningitis. Wow, that was some serious stuff. I was so out of it, it was hard to think straight but OK, what ever you say doc. This was followed by a fair amount of coming a going of folks. The doctor explained that he did know what he was doing but it was his first day on staff at this hospital and he had to check on procedural stuff. I asked where he had been previously. He told me and assured me that he was not new to doctoring or emergency rooms, just the paper work here. I still had to wonder if he was being overly cautious with all these procedures or was he just showing off at my expense. Don't be silly.Folks came and went as I dozed. I asked for a blanket and for the light to be switched off as they would leave. They gave me a Percocet and asked if I had ever had one before. The answer was no. When the girl came to take me for the CAT scan the doctor joked that it was my first Percocet and that she shouldn't take advantage. I laughed.After the CAT scan, it was time for the spinal tap. This frightened me. This was a first too. The idea was to stick a needle into the spinal cord and extract some fluid. If it was clear, all was good. If it was red, not so good. The thing was if I moved or the doctor moved things could go really bad. He asked me to lean over the examining table and hold on to it. Then he said, ¢Don't move.¢ I said, ¢No problem.¢ but thought, ¢Are you kidding?¢ That was scary. I slept while waiting for the results from everything.The doctor came back. How long it took was beyond my sleeping comprehension. The blood work was fine. The CAT scan was fine. The spinal tap was fine. He told me it must be a viral infection. Take 600 milligrams of Ibuprofen 3 times a day. I looked at him incredulously and said, ¢Ibuprofen?¢ with slow disbelief and thinking "vitamin-I". He told me that it would relieve the headaches and fever, neither of which were currently a problem.He said the hospital would put me up in a motel nearby. Just see the woman at the check out. I asked about getting there he said they would call a taxi. I asked if this would be part of my bill. He said no. Oh, my gosh. What was this going to cost. All this for some vitamin-I and there's no cure. I wanted him to be right but I wasn't convinced. This was too strange and intense for a virus it seemed.He did have some other words of advice. He asked if I was drinking Gatorade. He said I should be and related the story of the time he went hiking. OK. It's hard for a thru-hiker of 1600 miles to take such advice from a novice even if he is a doctor who just prescribed Ibuprofen. Don't get me wrong I didn't for a minute want the diagnosis to be a brain tumor or meningitis. Neither did I for a moment consider either of those to be the case. Maybe it was West Nile Disease or something else transmitted by those millions of mosquitoes I did battle with or maybe something from a tick, something definable and treatable. To quiet my meager protest he did order a West Nile test on my blood but that would take a week or so.I took care of some paperwork at the front desk. The name of my home doctor escaped me so they gave me contact info I could give him. My Palm PDA had just been mailed home at the last town stop after getting a bit too damp (wet) and loosing it's mind. It knew who my doctor was and so many other things. They gave me a voucher for the motel and sent me out into the dark of the night to the taxi.The motel was just a few blocks away but who knew if I would have found it in my disoriented state. It was a nice room but I hadn't had dinner. They had fed me something at the hospital. I went out to find Ibuprofen at a convenience store along with some juice and Ben & Jerry's. After all this was Vermont the home of B&J's. I slept well but it had only been an 11.5 mile day.