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Lying in my tent alone that night I wept quietly, as all the emotion seeped out of me. For the second time in recent years, I knew I should have died.
I wrote:
March 31, midnight.
The emotions of today have been crazy. And through it all, I just can’t quite fathom how the rope held my fall.
Over supper this evening, Nima spoke in rapid, dramatic gestures as he recounted the episode to the other Sherpas. I received double rations from Thengba, our hard-of-hearing cook, which I think was his way of reassuring me. Sweet man. He knows from experience how unforgiving this mountain can be.
My elbow is pretty darned sore where I smashed it against the crevasse, and I can feel small bits of bone floating around inside a swollen sack of fluid beneath it, which is slightly disconcerting.
The doctor says you can’t do much about an elbow apart from medicate and let time try to heal. At least it wasn’t my head!
I can’t get to sleep at the moment--I just keep having this vision of the crevasses beneath me--and it’s terrifying when I close my eyes.
Falling is such a horrible, helpless feeling. It caused me the same terror that I felt during my parachute accident.
I don’t think I have ever felt so close to being killed as I did today. Yet I survived--again.
It leaves me with this deep gratitude for all the good and beautiful things in my life, and a conviction that I really don’t want to die yet. I’ve got so much to live for.
I just pray with my whole heart never to go through such an experience again.
Tonight, alone, I put in words, thank you my Lord and my friend.
It’s been a hell of a way to start the climb of my life.
P.S.: Today is my Shara’s birthday. Bless her, wherever she is right now.
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