My husband, along with another rockstar friend, who also happens to be a doctor, a pathologist at U of W, were planning on hiking to basecamp at Everest with a group of about 16. That is 17,600 ft in the air. From there, the group was going to shrink to about 6-8 (half were friends of Mara, our friend) and climb another 3,000 feet or so to some peak. NOT summiting Everest. He isn’t that crazy. Or, perhaps it is I that am not crazy enough to let him even attempt it.
However, basecamp + 3,000 additional feet is no small deal. Acclimating to the lack of oxygen alone would put me on the NO GO list. But not my husband. He lives for this stuff. He prefers Hut to Hut skiing which requires climbing up a snow covered mountain on some huge mountain range in Austria, Switzerland or Italy…which takes hours (they put leather on their skis so they don’t slip) and start to side step up a whole face of a mountain….only to get to the top, and ski down totally unspoiled terrain. For about 10 minutes. Yes – hours of grueling hiking for 10 minutes of bliss. THAT is my husband.
So Everest… he has been training for about 16 months. He is a huge believer that when you are doing expedition type travel, with others in the group, it is your responsibility to be in great shape so as not to hold the group back. I am 100% confident when I say it would never be Will who holds a group back. It is not in his nature. If you knew his mother, you would understand. The apple does not fall far from the Janet tree! (Janet is his mom who is beyond formidable at an age I shall not post) .
He was leaving for Everest with Mara on Thursday, March 22, 2018. Mara’s husband Paul and I joked that while they were freezing their butts off and fighting the elements to stay alive…we might just fly to Hawaii with our four kids and drink Mai Tai’s and toast the more “sane” side of these marriages!
We are meeting the Neuro Surgeon for the first time on Monday, March 19 at 3pm…a few hours after I was to land back in Seattle from Palm Springs (a trip I am very happy I did not cancel). No one knows, other than my mom, that we are going to see this doctor.
I don’t know why we were both sort of casual about it. So casual that when we got the hospital Will said “I am so hungry lets grab a sandwich before we walk in”. I said okay go get one, I will walk ahead.
When you walk into U of W, it is like any major Medical Institution. It’s nice, but it’s not fancy nice. It’s clean and you see all walks of life…everyone is EQUAL when you walk into a hospital. Everyone sort of looks at each other with that same look of “ugh…doesn’t this blow…I am stressed, I am worried…but what the heck are you going to do? Lets fight”.
As soon as I got to the entrance of the Neurosurgery Wing at U of W I stopped myself. Thru those doors it does not look like the rest of the hospital. It is beautiful. It is beyond pristine…it sort of screams “if you walk in these doors, you are probably in a world of hurt so we are going to give you beautiful calm surroundings”. I was completely taken back by how much light, how many windows, the polished chrome or steel or whatever the heck it was -with no finger prints on it. You pass four reception desks (maybe three – I can’t fully remember) before you get to the very end, which is Neuro Surgery desk check in.
I actually turned around and walked out as my husband was walking in chewing on this huge sandwich. I looked at him and said “do you notice anything? you CAN NOT WALK THRU THIS PLACE EATING A SANDWICH!”. He peered over my shoulder to see what I was talking about. And quickly turned around and sat outside this “sanctuary of seriousness” and finished his sandwich.
Why Not Me 