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| Stories From Nepal |
| Sir Ed |
 In January, a man named Ang Rita Sherpa came to my office to introduce me to a Nepalese medical student. The student’s name was Kami Sherpa, and they wanted to know if he could do his pre-internship training in Patan Hospital. In my job as medical director, I meet many people recommending friends or relatives for these doctor posts. Before I could explain that we only take pre-interns whom the government sends to us, Ang Rita produced a letter. It extolled Kami’s many virtues and it was signed “Sir Edmund Hillary.”
Having worked many years as a health worker in the remote regions of the Everest region, Kami finally went to medical school when he was 36 years old. Hillary’s Himalayan Trust was pinning the future hopes of their Kunde Hospital on Kami. From what I could tell of Kami, he seemed a good fellow. So, I wrote to the government requesting that we make a place in Patan Hospital for Kami. And I wrote to Sir Edmund at his home in New Zealand, adding that if he was ever in Nepal we’d like to have him visit us at Patan Hospital.
Some time passed and Ang Rita brought word that the Hillarys would be coming to Nepal later that year. Our new Children’s Ward was due to open in the Spring, so I asked if Sir Edmund would be willing to inaugurate it for us. A letter came saying that he would be happy to do the honors, and would my wife and I come and join them for dinner.
Sir Edmund and Lady June met Deirdre and I at the door of the Himalayan Trust, where they stay during their yearly visit to Nepal. We were a bit awed, but they could not have been more easygoing. They sat us down in the living room in a small group that included Miss Elizabeth Hawley, an American who had lived in Kathmandu since 1961, and who looks after the Trust year round. The evening passed pleasantly. They seemed as interested in our lives as we were in theirs. Though he mostly sat quietly, Sir Ed occupied a large part in the circle of conversation. He smiled broadly and chipped in with a few stories, happy to go over territory worn by many retellings.
He climbed Everest in 1953. Over the years, his interest turned from the mountains to its people. He devoted his life’s work to the Sherpas – a small group of Nepalese people of Tibetan ancestry who live in the regions south of Everest – turning his fame into a channel for aid. His Himalayan Trust started two hospitals and a number of schools. He was working out at the Pamphlu Hospital in 1972 and his wife and youngest daughter were to fly out to join him. At the Kathmandu airport, the New Zealand pilot – who was excited to be transporting the Hillary family – forgot to take the “chocks” out of the propeller plane. Unable to turn, the plane crashed and all its passengers died. Sir Ed broke in on the story that was being told by someone else. “She was my sweetheart, that little girl.” Three years later, his best friend and climbing partner Peter Mulgrew died in a plane crash in Antarctica. Peter’s wife was June. “I suppose we looked at each other and said, ‘Well, now it’s just us two left.’” A few years later, at the prodding of their families, they were married.
As we left that night, we arranged to meet the Hillarys on the day of the Children’s Ward inauguration. In the meantime, they had plans to visit their projects in the hills around Everest.
On Thursday evening, Dr. Alistair called me from the Patan Emergency Room.
“I’ve some bad news.”
“What’s up, Al?”
“Well, Sir Edmund has come in with chest pain and shortness of breath. Looks like he’s in pulmonary edema. A helicopter took him out to his project in the hills, where he began to get short of breath, and later chest pressure. After 3 days he couldn’t stand it and he was flown in today. His cardiogram is abnormal.”
He was an aging bear of a man with a tangle of white hair, and his large jaw fell easily into a smile. He wanted to reassure me that he wasn’t really sick. As we moved him about to examine him, he tried gamely to exercise his latent athletic energy. But there was no bounce left. He was laboring under too many pounds, was over 80 years old, and his lungs were soggy with fluid. Everest’s first summiter had succumbed at the altitude of 8,000 feet.
The lab tests took some time to complete. We gave him a diuretic and discussed the need for him to be admitted to the hospital. Dr. Kami Sherpa, a nurse and I took Sir Ed up the elevator on a stretcher and wheeled him into the ICU. Several of us half-hoisted, half-directed him across into his bed. He looked around, taking a moment to focus on his new surroundings. Finding my face in the crowd, he beamed as if he were meeting an old friend after a long hiatus. “Ah!! So it’s you again!!”
He listened to his report – irregular heart beat, possible heart attack, fluid in the lungs causing low oxygenation. Here he was, in a mission hospital that cared for 300,000 patient visits a year, almost all local people and many quite poor. The equipment that surrounded him in our ICU was a grab-bag of used items donated from all over the world. Our nurses spoke barely passable English. His wife June would not be able to come in from the hills for another two days.
“Well, I’m sure that it will all work out. It always does. I have been through a few tough times before, and I can see that I am in quite capable hands. You have put me completely at ease.” He smiled broadly, showing the teeth of an adventurer.
But he slept poorly that night. The lady admitted to the next cubicle in the ICU was confused and combative, and made noise. The next night, another patient died in a nearby bed. Nevertheless, morning rounds found him better. Each day he invariably had something amusing to say, and then he’d add a few words about what a fine hospital he felt this was.
Examining him, I tried to concentrate on medicine and banish the inner voice that whispered to me, “Hey! This is the guy who climbed Everest. This is Hillary!” With the stethoscope I noted that the fine crackles in his chest had come down to just the bases of the lungs. The heart, though still irregular, had slowed to a healthier rate. His large hands lay peacefully in his lap.
“Your heart has been weakened, Ed. Do you exercise much?”
“Well, yes, I do. In fact, over the years I’ve been quite an active walker.”
He seemed to be doing better. The lab tests and repeat cardiogram and chest X-ray were reassuring. I gave him the latest reports and then let curiosity get the best of me.
“Ed, if I may ask: That day in 1953, who actually made it to the top of Everest first?”
“Well, with my axe, I cut the path up through the ice and snow on the approach to the top. Tenzing was just 5 yards behind me the whole way. But, you see, this is a question that mountaineers never ask. It was a team effort. We did it together. Unfortunately, after we came down into the real world, politics entered the picture. Cartoons were printed showing the Nepali carrying the Westerner up to the summit on his back …”
June arrived on the second morning. Ed was better. His steady help-mate and friend, she asked appropriate questions to learn more about his diagnosis. They were both very trusting of our care. Dr. David Murdoch, a New Zealand colleague of mine and friend of the Hillarys, was able to track down Sir Ed’s last cardiogram and FAX it out to us. Comparing this to the most recent one, we could determine that the abnormality on the cardiogram was old, thus lessening the likelihood that he’d had a heart attack.
We moved him to a room on the Private Ward. He came off the oxygen and began to walk the halls. Only then did he admit that he had found it a bit frightening being alone in the ICU.
Sir Ed brought up the issue of the Children’s Ward inauguration, something I’d been avoiding. In an offhand way, after I examined him one day, he mentioned getting his speech ready for the program. I found myself in a quandary. An old man, just coming out of heart failure, with an irregular heart beat, needs rest – the doctor in me said so. The medical director in me replied – everyone is counting on him and all the announcements and invitations have already gone out. I shared my dilemma with colleagues in the hospital. They said they were supportive of whatever I decided to do, which wasn’t much help. I spoke to June about possibly substituting for Ed at the inauguration. She said she would be more nervous about that than about Ed doing it himself. Even before he came into the hospital, I’d had a funny premonition that something would go wrong. Now I pictured the scene of Sir Edmund Hillary collapsing and breathing his last on the Patan Hospital stage.
Events took their own course. Each day he became stronger. When I walked with him in the hall, I had to step quickly to keep up. We talked of the plans for the inauguration. We could bring him in early through the back gate, get a wheelchair to meet him, get him up on the roof before the crowds came; he could leave early and skip lunch. June asked if we didn’t have an elevator to get to the roof where the tents would be set up. We didn’t. He was discharged from the hospital two days before the inauguration.
On the day of the inauguration, Sir Ed and Lady June returned through the front door. Supported by a cane, he walked the length of the new ward, viewing the rooms, saying “What a fine place for the children! Just lovely, isn’t it, June?!” Compliant with my request, he rested on the landing half way up the flight of stairs to the roof. When two of our petite nurses tried to hoist him up onto the stage, he turned to the crowd, raised his eyebrows and cried “They’re carrying me!”
Colorful circus tents had been erected across the roof of the new ward. It was a hot day in April with almost no breeze, so as the hour grew later, the air under the big-top grew stifling. Sir Ed’s speech was half about children and half about how thoroughly he had “enjoyed” his time as a patient in Patan Hospital, “and one is not supposed to enjoy being in a hospital.”
“One week in this hospital, including two days in the ICU, and look at me…” – he raised his arms widely from his ample frame; his face was red and moist – “the very picture of health!”
At the prescribed time, he pulled the curtain on the brass inaugural plate. The festivities ended with politicians making speeches about how much better Patan Hospital would be if we would help them in one way or another. We escorted Sir Ed out past the crowds, with a number of stops for introductions, handshakes, and photos. They stopped again and again to give another stranger a smile of appreciation and a few words of chat. The day was a success.
On the previous Saturday, Sir Ed’s third night in the hospital, he had been moved to a single room up on the Private Ward. I stopped by in the evening to see how he was doing. At the nurses' station, the senior nurse said, “Hari Maya has some children in to see him just now.” Hari, our nurse anesthetist, had asked me earlier if she could bring her kids in to meet him. I’d said OK, but reluctantly, for we had been trying to limit his visitors.
I walked down to his room. He held a circle of about 10 Nepalese children, with Hari standing behind them. They’d just sung him a song and were in the process of handing him small clusters of flowers. He sat on the edge of the bed, stooped forward, hands resting on his large thighs, an oxygen cannula in his nose. His hair appeared hurricane-blown.
At my arrival, Hari began to shoo the children out. Ed shook a hand, saluted another, and smiled wearily to the very last. Then it was just the two of us. The room was lit by the fading light from the balcony window and a dim florescent bulb overhead. A sheet of paper lay on his bedside table. It was a letter written in the careful hand of a child. At the top of the page was a crayon drawing of two men on a mountain peak, one planting a Nepalese flag, the other a New Zealand flag. The letter began “Dear Brave Heart of Mt. Everest 1953,”
He picked up the letter and looked at it, then handed it over to me.
“It’s really something, isn’t it?”
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