Author: gotgoodkarma

I got to go on my first “Boondoggle”! OK so maybe it wasn’t exactly a boondoggle if there was no plane or helicopter involved, but I was still the best (and slowest) road trip I’ve ever been on.

So to clarify, a “boondoggle” is when you get to be an extra (usually on a helicopter or fixed wing flight) to a field camp because there is an extra seat and they can use an extra person for shoveling out a fuel bladder or other, usual manual labor intensive, purpose.

We’ll I was getting up from the table at the galley to fill my water glass when someone stopped me and said “You’re with the WAIS camp, right?” I was like “yup, why?” so he said that his buddy needed a second person for a task – he had to go out to get a tractor and bring this sled around to the ice pier by discovery hut. Basically I was just an extra person for safety reasons you have to bring a buddy in case something happens on the sea ice. (I seriously need to make myself a tee shirt that says “Hired for my brain but used for my body” and on the back it could say “Property of USAP”.

So I was like… “sure I can move some things around and help you out”. (Ya know, move a few meetings around, blah blah blah – I’ve got time on my hands) I had no idea the afternoon I had in store. So I ran back to my room and threw on my ECW (Extreme Cold Weather Gear) cause you never know if the tractor breaks down on the sea ice and you’re stuck out spooning a seal for warmth.

I met him at the shuttle stop and we were driven way out of town, past Scott Base (the Kiwi station), past where you can see the ice shelf breaking into chunks up against the shore down the “snow road” to the flat perfectly white snow where there was a set up for the South Pole Traverse. (I’m going to do a blog post just about the Traverse soon, totally interesting!!)

Zoom in to see me behind the wheel!

He gave me a tour of the vehicles of the Traverse (pics coming in the Traverse post) and had me climb up into this giant tractor, in the jump seat next to him. He drove out to pick up the sled, hooked it on with the giant metal cords and had me climb into the drivers seat. I got to drive this massive piece of machinery pulling the sled behind miles down the road (going at about 8 mph max cause thats only as fast as you are supposed to go) until the turn off. After the turn off, after slowing this massive machine down slowly so that our load doesn’t smack us from behind he took over to cross from the ice shelf to the Ice Sheet and back to McMurdo.

That’s Mt Erebus (active volcano)

I love the tire tracks in the snow!

As many of you may have read, we (the NSF/USAP family) lost a dear member of the team, Dr. Gordon Hamilton, who has been a researcher and clearly beloved by all down here for years. I did not know him but can feel the love and loss around camp. This was a very tragic event.   I did not want to “blog” about it until the NSF had time to make a statement and the family could have some time to find out and mourn.  Here is the statement made by the NSF.

NSF announcement to the American Press

Gordon, as people refer to him, has done some amazing research so I will let him speak for himself by this link to his profile at the University of Maine.  You can find also a list of his publications here as and links to articles about him.

Gordon Hamilton University of Maine

On a more personal note, this news really shook me.  I understand the risks of being out here and we have gone through many trainings in town before we head out to our respective field camps.  I also am not new to trauma and death as I have been working in the filed of medicine, mostly in Emergency Medicine, for 13 years.  What really hit me was that these people I’m with and taking care of aren’t strangers anymore.  After less than 2 weeks they are already my field camp family and I cannot imagine losing any of them.  I feel prepared in many ways… the UTMB, NSF & USAP program has geared me with medications and supplies that I will need and all the educators I’ve had from PA school, trainings and my years of hands on experience have geared me with the knowledge and skills to deal with whatever comes my way, but these are extremes of environment and isolation.  My “clinic” will be about 1000 miles from McMurdo, that’s about 3-4 hours by plane when a plane is available and the weather abides.   I might go as far to say that I am probably the most isolated health care provider in the world there, with the closest “hospital” being a small clinic here in McMurdo.

Strangely, this doesn’t scare me but excites me.  I’m sure Gordon felt the same way about his work.

No the cold experience sure isn’t something Imax can portray! So it’s Sunday, our only day off here in Antarctica and they I heard they had the Discovery Hut open for tours. This was hut build by Scott back in the early 1900’s and sits just outside of town at Discovery Point. I was told it’s only a 10 min walk (not untrue) but I had no idea there would be a hour wait outside the hut and didn’t quite take into account that the wind chill was -30 F!

I wouldn’t say I wasn’t all bundled up. I felt warm in my core, arms and legs with my multiple layers of wool, quilted carports, thermal, more will and down but my hands and feet just weren’t keeping up. The walk out there was great! Wind was at my back. Standing outside wasn’t terrible. I considered waiting till next week but there would be more people arriving by then and the line would still be long. Even at the front of the line I considered calling it and just going back. But I was chatting with the scientists on line with me about sea spiders and so I stuck it out. They had their big reds on and ECW gloves but one had ripped jeans and the other didn’t have a neck gaiter or bakalava. At least I had a neck gaiter and a scarf in addition to my big furry hat.

We’ll…I got into the hut but made it fast cause it was colder inside the hut! Took some pictures of 100 year old dog biscuits and headed back. This time the -30 F winds were gusting right at me and I had to lean into the wind just to walk. My toes were for sure already numb and my hands went numb super fast when I took my mittens off to secure my hat’s neck strap. But I was already mildly hypothermic and fumbling so I had to hold my hat on all while rubbing my fingers inside by mittens.

I made it back but couldn’t feel my toes. My heart was racing! I quickly got my boots and socks off to assess the situation and thankfully they were not white like I had imagined based on how they felt. I put on two pairs of wool socks and wrapped myself in my wool blanked and hunkered down with a movie. Two hours later I still had the shivers but at least I could feel my toes again.

Note to self…pack toe and hand warmers (they are free and by just about every door) and never journey out without at least two pairs of socks or my ECW boots.

Here’s some pics of the dog biscuits… worth it??

Here’s another great almost sunset pic. Its hard to get a good picture without bits and pieces of McMurdo infrastructure in the foreground unless I walk kinda far out of town.

So this whole week so far has been mostly Field Safety Skills like how not to die. One instructor put up a graph with an X & Y axis. On one axis was the risk of death and the other was something like the task. Where the two met was green, further out it was yellow, orange and then red which was basically death. So he went on to say that with each task you want to minimize your risk of death, and if you are in the yellow, well that’s pretty good. He reminded  me of Jeff Spicoli from Class of Ridgemont High with his bleach blonde hair and his surfer mentality (he was from Colorado so maybe it was more of a snowboarder mentality but you get the jist). I redrew the graph, x is the best case scenario we can hope for here.  Red is like, dead…

We also had a meeting about safety in our workplace and had to make a list regarding these issues…
What can kill you in your area of work?
How can you stop it from killing you?
What can kill others in your work area?
How can you prevent it?
We were also asked to draw a picture. I drew a picture of old man winder blowing cold down on  my stick figure self standing outside my tent with my snowman friend and I was thinking “burr its  #$%^@* cold!” I’m most worried the cold will kill me. Most other people drew pictures of fork  lifts and other large vehicles running people over.

Lets face it, it’s not a safe environment (thats why they have me there) we are 1000 miles from  a base in Antarctica, not 1000 miles from a major trauma center.   So basically I’m the only health care provider for 1000 miles, and the closest place to send someone (if the weather obides, is a small base clinic.   I’ll give it to the NSF, they are  focused on safety and I feel that I’m given all the gear I could imagine I could need.  I’ll go over my gear more in another post, but they have some good stuff I take with me.  Now I just need to train my crew on trauma drills and hopefully train someone to do an IV incase I ever need one!!

I’m for sure happy to be supporting the science here.

So I mailed myself a pillow so I could be super comfy, you never know what you get issued. The way I did this was I put my best pillow in a garbage bag and stuck the end of a vacuum in the bag, against the pillow and held tight around the hose until all the air was sucked out and the pillow was flattened.  So it arrived and has lost a little suction.  The woman at the “post office” was curious how I packed that so tight so I explained to her the pillow and the vacuum story.  She said she’s been curious (it took me a while to pick it up at the post office). It looks like its about to burst!!!

My first night in Mactown (what we call McMurdo here) was so awesome.  After being up at 5am to get ready for my flight in Christchurch and the most exhilarating flight down, I was just starting my second wind by 9/10pm when I was setting out to meet my field camp crew at the local bar Southern Exposure or “Southern” for a drink.  A double Bombay and tonic (no lime and in a reusable plastic cup that looks just like a red solo cup) runs about $8 here, and measured precisely. From there I heard about a party in Hut 10, which I guess used to be where the head haunch used to live when there was a military presence here. I think, don’t hold me to that.  Now it can be reserved for parties.  It sits just looking out over the bay with a big bay window that you can crawl up into.  Around 11/12:00 the sun started to set and lingered there in all its glory welcoming me for about 4 hours, not sure even if it actually ever set.  I mean really… I’ve never seen a sun linger in its setting state for so long!

Greetings from Antarctica!

Well, I finally made it, or as they say here…”Boots on the ground.”  I got in 2 days ago and have been busy settling in, making friends and getting used to life in McMurdo.  But lets back up a bit and l’ll tell you all about the flight down which was way cool.  The US Air Force brought us down, maybe 50 people or so on a Hercules LC 130, which is a giant military plane.  Along with my new coworkers and friends, I piled into a bus in my big red coat and my orange duffle bag stuffed to the rim cause I thought I wasn’t going to make weight on my checked back and it turned out I was almost 20 lbs below the limit.  Some were on their first season like me and also excited, and some were well seasoned employee on there second, third or 10th season on the ice.  Though the latter try to act cool, I know they were feeling the energy the newbies were putting out there making them excited as well and they were definitely excited for us too.

We all shuffled out of the bus, grabbed our brown bagged lunch at the bottom of the metal staircase and climbed into this massive plane.  I found myself a seat along the perimeter of the plane, and settled in.  It probably didn’t help that I ate a huge sugary meringue right before I got on the plane, I could barely sit still.  I pulled out my iPhone and picked the soundtrack for liftoff… Guns N Roses, “Paradise City”.  My new friend next to me hooked into my earphone jack splitter.  This was her second season and she was just as excited as I was.  We rocked it out air guitar style as we took off.

I can think of  one word to describe the feeling of the air when I stepped off the plane…Crisp.  Yeah, a little cold but it wasn’t windy so it wasn’t bad at all, I had been anticipating unbearable cold.  The sun was bouncing off everything white, which is basically snow all around me as far as the eye can see, shockingly bright.  Around us were mountains, some far in the distance, so white and beautiful, it was like when you reach the top of a long hard trail and see the most beautiful scenery, but this was just all around me.

We had only a short moment to get over the awe and onto the big red bus/truck vehicle that would take us across the bay (yup, driving over frozen bay) to Ross Island where McMurdo the main base is.  Towering over Ross Island is Mt. Erebus at 12,448 ft, a steaming volcano active for the past 1.3 million years.  It wasn’t that east to see all of it with its lenticular cloud hovering over it, I was only slightly homesick thinking about Mt. Rainier and how it never gets old seeing that amazing mountain also with it’s much smaller lenticular clouds.

On the way to McMurdo we passed Scott Base, the New Zealand base around the corner and over the hill.  I arrived with a quick presentation/orientation and met both my field camp manager and the medical team (MD, PA and an RN who came to welcome me).  There is was, am I “medical” or am I “field camp”, two different entities there.

A little overwhelming to finally have my “boots on the ground” and excited for everything to come.  Sorry for the delay, I have much more to tell but wanted to get a quick post up with a few pics.   I have many more stories to share from my first few days.  Stay tuned…

After a 24 hour delay yesterday and a two hour delay today, I’ve got my bag checked (only 68 lbs!) and my boarding pass. I can’t wait!