Dawn's Notes
When Dreams Are Dashed, When Plans Are Changed - June 2015
by Dawn Phelps, RN/LMSW
“We were in our tents and we thought ‘this is the mother of all avalanches coming,’” Andy Land said to the Associated Press when interviewed following the 7.8 magnitude quake that hit Nepal on Saturday, April 25, 2015. Andy continued, “You could hear it roaring down on either side of us and thought for sure we were going to die in the next 10 seconds because there’s no place to go.”
Andy and his climbing team were camped in tents on the Khumbu Icefall, a glacier on the side of Mount Everest, the day the earthquake struck. Andy Land, age 52, of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, is a nurse and hospice director who wanted to climb Mount Everest to fulfill a dream on his bucket list, to honor the 26,000 patients and families his program has served, and to draw attention to Hospice Organization Experts of Wisconsin (HOPE).
“Climbing is the perfect metaphor for what my patients and their families go through,” Andy said. He has been climbing mountains for 25 years, with his first attempted climb up Mount Rainier in Washington in 1992. Even though he did not reach the summit of his first mountain, Andy kept climbing and conquered some impressively high mountains in North and South America.
Then Andy set his sights on the highest mountain the world, 29,029-foot-high Mount Everest, between Nepal and Tibet. Only about 4,000 people have lived to make it to the summit, and over 200 remain frozen on the mountain. It is too difficult to get those who die back off the mountain, especially after they have entered the “the Death Zone” that begins at about 26,000 feet, where there is not enough oxygen to support life for long.
Before his journey to Nepal, Andy told CNN affiliate WITI that he knew his life could be at risk by his climb. He said, “Dying is a part of living and we need to talk about that. In the U.S., we pretend like it’s never gonna happen, and we don’t talk about dying until it’s so obvious the person is going to die that no one can deny it.”
Andy did not take climbing Everest lightly. He spent one year intensely training. He Left Wisconsin and started his climb up Everest in April to allow plenty time for his body to acclimate to the higher altitude. Andy planned to reach the summit in May. But after the quake, his goal of climbing upward changed. It was too unsafe to climb any higher. It was also too dangerous to climb down over the ice field where new, deep crevasses had opened up.
So Andy and 149 other climbers were airlifted by helicopters to a lower base camp that Andy described as looking “like a war zone,” with dead bodies and equipment strewn about. Nineteen people were killed in the camp and many more injured. Andy said, “You’re stunned, you’re really shocked. I’m really trying to come to terms with all of this, what does it mean?”
Next the climbers began their several-day trek down the mountain on foot, following narrow mountain trails and crossing a swinging bridge between mountains. Luckily they still had food, water, and their tents to assist them on the journey, since Nepal had little electricity, food, or water left after the quake. As the climbers trekked downward, they helped the people of Nepal by clearing rubble from community buildings and homes along the way.
They finally reached a town where they could be flown to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, then back to the U.S. Andy arrived back in Wisconsin the second week of May shortly before a second 7.3 magnitude quake struck Nepal on May 12th. The second quake was closer to Mount Everest than the first. In regard to the second quake, Andy Land stated, “This one which centered much closer to Mt. Everest has brought me right back there. I cannot imagine how difficult this is going to be for the people in these villages I just left. It also occurred to me that, if I was still on the mountain, I would be making my summit attempt now. An earthquake that close to Everest, with me high up on the mountain, would have been VERY bad. I am very glad to be home.”
Andy was on Mount Everest at precisely the right time to be involved in an earthquake that was more devastating than the one that struck Nepal 80 years previous—definitely not in Andy’s plan! More than 8,000 people were killed in the first quake, yet Andy’s life was spared. Maybe Andy has wondered why others were killed on the mountain yet he survived. Originally, he had hoped to make it up Mount Everest. But after the quake, his goal was to get down the mountain alive. He just wanted to stay alive when aftershocks and avalanches threatened his life, and he wanted to go home.
No doubt Andy has drawn attention to hospice through radio, television, and newspaper interviews—that part of his goal is done. But Andy says he “doesn’t think he will return to Everest because the trip is such a large undertaking. . . . It’s not that I’m afraid of dying so much. It’s just, it’s a really, really hard thing to do.”
Andy’s earthquake experience probably impacted him in far deeper ways than if he had reached the summit of Mount Everest. In one interview, Andy said, “I feel that long ago, I learned that the summit is promised to no one. There’s no guarantee of anything. So it’s the experience that matters the most” adding that “the experience has changed his life.”
After a life-altering experience such as the death of someone we love, we are challenged with how to move on with life. Our goals and purpose for our lives may be forever changed in an instant. As one survivor named Kawang said after the quake, “I have lost everything. But . . . I can’t sit holding my head in horror forever.”
We are not promised to reach the summit, and there are no guarantees that we will accomplish our dreams. After any loss, even though it is not easy, we must face the world again and keep living. What other choice do we have? We must try to move forward and search for a new purpose even when dreams are dashed, when our plans are changed.
Call about the next "Living Life after Loss" Group at:
Meadowlark Hospice 709 Liberty Clay Center, Kansas
(785) 632-2225
Dawn Phelps, RN/LMSW, Group Facilitator