I can see Ben's progress across the river as I tuck in Adam as best as I can. I pop a few more hand warmers in around him, probably for the both of us to feel like I'm still doing something to make his situation better instead of just standing around. His neuro checks are still great, thank goodness. There isn't much I could do if he started slipping. I put on a dry beanie as well as some dry gloves myself and drop a hand warmer in each of them. Why does Robby have so damn many hand warmers? He doesn't normally carry these… not that I'm complaining.
Adam is still concerned about his fingers. They feel weird but he's having trouble describing exactly how. I do another set of CSM checks. They are warm to the touch, telling me that they are adequately perfused. I relay this to him and he says that it feels good when I squeeze on the tips of his fingers. And that it makes him feel like we are working the blood around or something. Ok, lets do that. I take five or ten minutes massaging one hand and then move around to his other side and do the other. I don't care if it has any medical utility or not. We've stumbled on something that feels good for the poor guy. I'm happy to do this the whole time we wait if he wants.
Robby comes back, having set up a fire ring that’s ready to light should we need it for signaling or to warm ourselves. He doesn't have any gloves on, likely from his fire set up, and his hands have taken on a blueish tint.
"How are you doing?" he asks with a nod of his head my direction.
"I'm good man, thank you. I was just thinking the same thing. Your hands look cold." I say.
In these situations the caregivers so often don't think of their own well being. Its pretty well known. I guess on the 15 minutes we were apart, we both thought of making sure each other was ok as well as our patient. He puts on some gloves, pulls out a Gatorade grabs some beef jerky for us both.
"I guess we forgot to eat lunch, huh?"
"Yeah, you've got to stop for thoughts like that to settle in, I guess"
We each take a few bites and drink some Gatorade while watching Ben as he now descends the mountain across the river. He's still in the sun, but our side of the canyon is back in the shade. I look up at the rocks blocking our share of warm light. It is getting later… somewhere around 3 maybe? I hope that heli gets here soon. My feet are getting cold standing here.
I relay my cold feet to Robby, just to make sure he knows all that I know. This team of ours has been working very well so far. But, in order to continue making solid decisions, we all need all the info. We greet Ben's return with a congratulatory chunk of jerky and Gatorade cheers.
"No luck up there. But it was pretty warm at least." Ben reports back to the group.
About 30 minutes after activating the beacon, we hear what we think is a helicopter. Nope, plane. And another plane. Then another. How did we end up under a jet way? Wait, that's not a plane. Definitely a helicopter's rotors beating! Then it swings into view, coming from up river over the canyon wall… and flies right on over, heading to the Teepee. Damn.
We watch it circle a bit then start doing wider sweeps and finally head upriver. Ben and I scramble to toss all the loose gear and trash from the hand warmers into dry bags before the heli blows it all in the river as Robby hikes up the hill towards the fire and starts to wave his arms. We spread out and grab paddles to wave to ensure they see us. They don't end up landing where I'd expect, but we at least chose an LZ with options. They land just far enough off that the rotor wash doesn't buffet us much at all. It's not even quite as loud as I was expecting from the last time I was around a helicopter.
"Your day is about to get a whole lot better my friend." I lean down and say to Adam. I think he might actually be smiling.
Earlier, while paddling, Robby and I joked that between him and I, one of us will know someone on the flight team that responds. As they jump out of the heli and head over towards us, this proves to be true. The flight nurse is his cousin. They share a big hug as she recognizes him. She recognizes me from our days working in the ER together before she joined the flight team and sends me a warm smile before getting down to business. We show her and the flight medic what we've got and what we've done, as well as introduce our new friend. She starts her initial patient interview and then the team returns to the chopper to get the gear and the sled.
In a flurry of activity, we all work together to get him down to their gurney (sled) and off of our gear. It’s a cold transition for Adam as we not only take the pile of insulation gear off of him, but the flight team cuts his clothes off. In the controlled chaos his hat has come off too. I know the clothes removal is needed, but I know they don't need the hat off too. I yank off my beanie and put it on his head, coaxing him to bear with this and that this part will be over very soon. They wrap him in their "life blanket" and we all circle the sled to lift it up and carry him over.
"Wait, wait." Adam calls out. We all stop, and ask him what he needs. "Tyson, you need my headlamp, its in my bag. Take it." Knowing that we still have to run the rest of the river and we will almost certainly still be out here past sundown, he's trying to take care of us. He's a damn good guy.
"Robby's got one, we'll be good man. Don't you worry about us." I tell him.
We carry him over to the heli in one big group and get him loaded up. Thankfully Robby’s cousin is understanding of our plight as well. She knows we've got to get moving if we're going to make it off the river safely. She's the one who made the call to load up so quickly. Often, the initial care would start at the scene. In this case, the back of our boat. Starting IV's and doing assessments would have taken time Robby and I no longer had. Another thing she did to help us, much less all she did to help Adam, was she was able to text Robby's wife, Bree. Rob was at least aware of the emotional fallout the setting off that SPOT would have for his family.
The follow up call that Logan got from SPOT went something like this-
"Here’s what we know. Someone took a fall, maybe 50 feet. Broken leg, broken arms, head injury. We aren’t sure if its Robbie or Tyson."
"Thank y…" CLICK
So there was every reason to be worried.
But, 30 seconds before Logan called Bree to inform her that there's 50/50 chance her husband and father of their two young children is badly hurt, the flight nurse’s text comes through.
Robby is safe. It wasn't Him or Tyson, they were helping someone else.
Now we are just down to one emergent situation left… getting off the river. We're only about halfway down, with all the major rapids left to go. I guess some of these rapids are class IV that Robby typically scouts. We are pushing off, just as the helicopter takes off above us at around 4pm. We were late before we found our troubled fisherman. We figured we had about 70 minutes of “light” with about 4 miles of rapids and 3 miles of flat water.
“If we can just make it through the big stuff while I can see, we’ll be ok.” Robby told me.
In the essence of time, I left my boat deflated and just re-rigged the raft and jumped on the back. Robby knew he had to push. Luckily for us, the water level was good. Its part of the reason we wanted to run it this weekend as well, actually. This not only helped propel us along, but it also made the rapids much more manageable and a little less technical.
I was still impressed with how well Robby handled them. They did require more than just "follow the water" and punching on through. He had to make corrections and course changes mid-rapid. His boat is just small enough to be able to even run this section. I cant imagine this at a lower water level. It would take a damn good boater to get through. Thankfully, I had one. Not once was I worried about getting bucked out or us flipping, even though he was no longer taking the kindest routes through. We still wanted to have some fun, after all.
We shot out of the last rapid with about 10 minutes of light to spare. Couldn't have cut that much closer. Ben, our kayaking buddy stuck with us through the rapids, even though he could have gone much faster. Its just not safe to boat alone. Once on the flatwater stretch, a couple miles to go until pleasure park, we were essentially home free. Ben took off, because he was getting cold, but not before exchanging numbers. He took a cool video of the chopper taking off that we both wanted to see. At this point, the boat would coast to the take out even without our efforts. But, Robby kept pushing, as it was only getting colder. My toes had gone numb, but there was little I could do about it other than look forward to the dry clothes awaiting me in Logan's truck. Robby’s mind was still on his wife, and he was working to warm up his phone enough so that it could turn on. Utilizing the horizontal "pee zip" on his dry suit, he had to get a little intimate with his phone in order to do so. Eventually it did turn on, and he was able to get word out.
It is pitch black out as we approached the take out, headlights flicked on, pointed upriver towards us. Logan must have doubled back. We glided up to the little beach there and there stood our nauseous friend in the cold. I really expected him to yell out, "I leave you two alone for 5 minutes…" or some such thing. He did say something funny, but I've forgotten now what it was. He helped us pull ashore and start de-rigging the boat. Evidently, Ben had arrived and let him know we were ok and coming in soon, so he was able to get word back to everyone's loved ones too. Ben was warming up in Logan's truck while we battled the ice that had formed on all the cam buckles holding the straps on. Damn, it was cold.
With all the gear tossed in the back and Ben reunited with his crew, and us ours, Robby looked to me and asked, "are you going to change or should we just get going?"
"Lets just get in and crank the heat, all my gear is buried anyway." I said.
And with that, we loaded up and headed home. It took hours of debriefing the situation, and hearing Logan's and Bree's perspective to get the whole picture. I stayed late at Bree and Robby's place talking out all that happened and enjoying the wonderful dinner Bree had hot and waiting for us… and their hot tub. Days later Robby and I are still talking it out and working to understand it. Its hard not to see how so many "coincidences" involved might just be something bigger. It became clear that if it hadn't all lined up the way it did Adam would have died. It turns out he did break his leg and wrists, but also his orbital (eyesocket) and had an open (bone exposed) La Fort fracture (mid face). On top of that, we found out that he had a frontal lobe bleed as well as pneumocephaly (air inside the skull) from fractured nasal sinuses. I still think that ultimately it wouldn't have been his injuries that he would succumb to, but the temperature. I don't think he could have survived a night out there, either with someone finding him or not. Getting him out was the only solution. Its just so fortunate that it all lined up the way it did. He's the luckiest unlucky guy I know.
Its not the most flattering photo of any of us, but here we are...