“North Carolina? No ma’am, we’re in Tennessee…... no, we are not on any road, we are still on the trail. Ah… no, I have never heard of that the highway… ahhh yea, Tennessee, that's right.” This was the conversation I was overhearing on one of the two mobile phones that currently had a signal.
I had the only other viable phone to my ear. On the other end I could hear my wife calmly say, “OK, so let’s go over this again. When it looks like he is having trouble breathing on his own, someone needs to give him mouth to mouth. Watch his chest, look at it now, see what a full breathe looks like. Make sure he is flat on his back, chin up. Once you can no longer force air into his lungs, you’ll need to find the Adams apple, then one inch below is another bump with cartilage in between. This is your target.” As she was talking, I used my finger to feel my throat. It was rough, boney, and uninviting but at the same time vulnerable.
Very shortly I might need to locate this strategic spot on my new friend Donn who was lying in front of me. I would then need to stab using the largest blade of my Swiss army knife into this part of his neck. Half an inch horizontal cut, half an inch deep. Not too deep or I could push through the other side, not too wide or the tube wouldn’t fit snug. It would take a firm jab rather than a slice to make this happen. I suppose this is why you always hear people talk about using a ball point pen to perform a tracheotomy. As I felt my own neck, I imagined how barbaric a pen going through my throat would be.
In this single specific respect, I was glad we were now on the Appalachian Trail with plenty of knives to pick from. If we were instead stuck in an elevator in some industrial park I'm sure the mob of people around me would each produce a blunt pen and wish me the best of luck as they turned to face the wall.
Instead I’m here with a group of nineteen hikers on the second day of our four day trek. Normally I would have left earlier, but this morning I got up late thanks to a prescription dose malfunction of sorts. With me are the two guys I normally hike with and a hand full of people I had only recently met.
Given the currently situation, each person with me seemed uniquely prepared. From one of them I was able to cut about two inches of plastic tubing off the end of his water filter. Another had the handful of Benadryl tablets. Anti itch powder and even some duct tape to hold the tube in place were also at my disposal. A lighter to sterilize the blade and the whole scene looked like some cheesy MacGyver rip off.
It was a beautiful morning, walking up outdoors always feels purposeful. I just about settled into a rhythm for the hours of trekking to come. It had surprised me how fast things changed. Just a few minutes earlier Donn was ahead of us shouting "come on, double time" which perplexed me a bit and I think slightly annoyed his wife. As soon as she got to him, she was asking why he didn't know to avoid the obstacle that we were warned about last night at camp. Truth is, if Donn hadn’t just passed me, it would have been me there instead. I'm not sure what other words were exchanged between them but when he said his tongue felt thick and he was having trouble breathing, everything changed.
As a kid I use to keep spiders as pets. I suppose Charlotte’s Web had a big impact on me. I used to also take empty jars and put them over a flower that a bee was harvesting. Sliding the lid underneath, I would trap the flower and bee inside. I quickly learned that it didn't take long for the bee to die, even with holes punched into the lid and drops of water dipped in. I think when the bee lost the purpose for living it would quickly decide not to.
Bees are special, very communal, extremely hard working, so much so that the Pope himself gave them a special blessing. Or so I was told by my aunt a long time ago. Of course this is the same aunt that reads my coffee grounds to tell my future and thinks they should attach a rope to a airplane, so if something goes wrong midflight they can just pull it back in.
There are three words for death in the Albanian language. When a plant dies its said to "thae", an animal is "cofe" and when a person passes away it would "dek". When I was little I would mistakenly say that a pet "ka dek (human)" and would be quickly be corrected "ka cofe (animal)".
That's why I was surprised one day to hear that some bees "kan dek (human)”. My aunt patiently explained that it was decided a long time ago that since bees were such hard workers, the Pope at the time had elevated them to the status of "dek (human)" rather than just "cofe (animal)". When I first learned this I thought it was pretty cool, as they are particularly amazing creatures and like Poo, I'm a big fan of honey.
None of this crossed my mind however when earlier today I heard from up ahead Donn shout loudly, “BEES!!”. With a full, thirty-some pound pack on, I saw him leap straight up, then crouch down a bit and bolt forward making kung fu like chopping motions down near his legs.
Like a growing cloud, I could see the swarm swelling from the ground at the apex of the switchback up a head of me. In that same instance, I noticed the blue bandana someone had tied to a stick as a warning to fellow hiking of the coming danger. I was inexplicably confused for a split second as my mind recalled the previous night’s discussion about bees but with a red bandana marking the danger. Maybe the bees switched it for a blue one. Crafty little bastards… human-like indeed.
I was still behind the mis-colored bandana and well away from the newly discovered hive so what happened next came as a complete surprise. I was looking up through the rhododendrons to see if I could bush-whack my way past this problem when I felt a series of hot pin pricks on my leg and chest. It started off as just an “ouch” but then grew to “oww… oww…, oww, owwwwww, OWWWH, damn!”
I would like to say I looked back and saw the swarm coming right at me in its glorious dark formation headed up by a fearless captain bee with that all too familiar buzzing sound, but when one of them hit me right in the face and was trying to hump the side of my nose, the Hollywood moment was lost for me. I screamed some profanity, turned and ran. Then I ran some more probably with the same accompanying kung fu motions.
After swatting some bees off, I could still hear at least one near my right ear. He had become entangled by my birds nest like scrappy hair. While still running (did I mention I was carrying a full pack), I tried to flick this bee away but could tell it was doing some bush whacking of its own, heading right for my scalp.
I did a quick calculation; if I squashed it with my hand it with certainly string one of my fingers. Since I had only recently learned how to properly wrap the straps of my trekking sticks around the meaty part of my thumb, the health of my fingers were a crucial part of the proper stride to navigate this rugged terrain. If on the other hand it stung my head, well... my head didn't even make the short list of essential things to take on the trip. So hot little poker to the head it was.
Once I stopped, and could breathe normal, the remaining hikers behind me and I discussed our strategy. We dropped our packs and put on every protective piece of clothing we had at our disposal. With no knowledge yet of the extent to which Donn had been stung and sitting painfully on the switchback above, we joked and giggled like school girls as we approached the hive. Most of us were deep in the slow going rhododendron short cut when we hear someone yell out. The hive had sent out another attack. Once again I was running with a full pack but this time wearing what was essentially a sauna suit. This wave claimed a few more victims including someone who got it right on the kisser.
We heard Donn calling to us from above, but needed to strip down and survey the damage first, again we didn’t realize the volume of venom working its way through his body. How much time had passed from since the first wave? How many stingers were still lodged in parts of his body continuing to pump? When we finally caught up to him, we didn’t know the answers to any of these questions, we didn’t even know to ask. So here we were thinking we would wait a bit until he caught his breathe.
After a little while the look of discomfort on Donn’s face turned more to distress, his words more difficult to understand and breathing more labored, we all knew it was time to ask more questions. We lifted up his shirt to see sting marks here and there and some red bumps forming under his arms. He joked with his wife about checking to see how many had bit him on the rear.
Someone took one of those foil-like emergency blankets and covered him with it. I’m not sure if it helped him, but it seemed to bring a small sense of comfort to the rest of us. He remained in good spirits, just part of his natural personality, making another joke about the view from the ground where he laid. His wife bent over to kiss him. Her lips seemed to say, “I’m still going to worry about you, but thank you.”
Later, she lifted up his shirt again to assess the situation. “Good, looks like the bumps are gone”, someone proclaimed. From a distance away it appeared this way. However, from where I was standing I could see the patches of small bumps had merged together such that his torso was now one large inflamed welt. I think we all came to the same conclusion, if this was happening on the outside, the same must be developing inside his throat.
Everyone that had a phone checked for service. I said my wife was a nurse and could call her for advice. After I got her on the phone she quickly assessed the situation. What was his condition, how was the breathing, what did we give him? “How many Benadryl ok to give him?” I asked. “Start with all of them” was the reply. These details helped but what I needed to hear was the utter confidence in her voice.
I learned about this unshakeable quality when our two year old daughter had a terrible infection in her neck and we rushed her to the University of Michigan hospital. After two very painful botched attempts at starting an IV in her tiny little arm, my wife started giving the orders. Half the staff was angry at her, the other half afraid. She was so in command of the situation she should have been drawing a salary. The next person allowed to touch my daughter was the emergency IV nurse they used on their rescue helicopter. This woman could sew the buttons on a flea’s lapel. Later, she too admitted she was a bit intimidated to enter our room. The university is sometimes referred to as the Big House. On this day, Momma Bear was in the Big House.
As she spoke to me over the phone, I was infused by the sound of her steadfastness. As I continued to listen, I moved away from the group so I could rehearse the steps needed to perform a tracheotomy. I saw Bill on the other working phone trying to explain what state we were in to the emergency operator. Why were they talking about North Carolina? Another hiker was just returning having found the nearest road and posting a sentinel there to flag down help. I saw a woman from the group praying together with Donn and his wife.
This wasn’t the walk through the woods I had expected. But I was filled with this feeling that everything was exactly the way it was intended to be. We humans are suppose to be in communion with one another and all these wonderful people were living out exactly how that should look. I didn’t bring a camera on this trip, like my head, it didn’t make the essential list. But this was one of those rare moments in life where the mind takes a snapshot for you and frames it with context and emotion, something you will pull out and look in the years to come. Things always work out, they have no choice.
As two husky Paramedics dressed in blue came down the trail, I knew on this day I wouldn’t be asked to stab anyone in the neck. We helped Donn into the chair like contraption they brought down with them. A stretcher would certainly not have been practical in a situation like this. Four of us each took a handle, but he still felt very heavy to me. At one point I could barely keep from falling off the edge of the trail, so we had to switch to just two people carrying him. One final hill and there was the ambulance in the middle of this gravel road. Not something that looked natural on this hilly wooded trail.
As they were getting ready to hoist him up through the open back doors of the ambulance, he motioned to his wife to get a picture. We all laughed and some of us posed with him making funny faces. He would end up spending the night in the hospital, enough time to count the seventy five bee stings.
So what do I think about bees now after all this? I don’t think I would want them to either “dek (human)” or “cof (animal)” but I do think someone needs to mark the trail a whole lot better than it was.
