Throwing up. I thought it would be an interesting subject to elaborate upon. Not your run of the mill, “I was kicked in the stomach and yakked up” throwing up, or “doing pushups and drinking beer every repetition in the Muscle Garden at Jordan’s” throwing up, but worse. On our training trip down the Washington State coast from La Push to Aberdeen, I got sick; so sick that I threw up eight times in a thirty six hour period.
Before we left La Push, we had a hearty breakfast. I had eggs and bacon, sourdough toast, jam, and orange juice. We began rowing in moderate ocean conditions, with current and bobbing waves. I had first shift with Adam. After the first two hours, I was sweating a bit. It was not the good kind of sweating, but the kind of perspiration around your temples and forehead that signify that one is about to get violently ill.
Have you ever seen one of those people on an airplane before? They’re usually taking tiny swigs of water, fidgeting with the skin under their neck, and breathing laboriously. I’ve been there before, when I first started flight testing for Boeing. Now that I am acclimated to these “wild” maneuvers in the air, I haven’t gotten sick while testing. During the first year, my friend and I were doing Stall cascades from twenty to ten thousand feet, in a 737 with no windows in the fuselage, over and over again, for hours on end. He first threw up in front of the computer console. A few minutes later, exhausted and drained myself, perspiring from nausea, and overcome with the putrid smell of vomit in a bag nearby, I threw up. We traded off seats (one running data in the computer facing forward sipping on bottled water, and one facing sideways and looking down at the paper data charts – the most uncomfortable job no doubt), each taking over for the other who had most recently thrown up. This lasted for a couple hours. The situation became so tenuous, and so noxious, that one of the other engineers in the front of the airplane couldn’t handle it, and demanded the pilots return to Boeing Field.
Luckily for my friend and me, we returned to land, re-hydrated ourselves, and recovered. Out on the Ocean, off the coast, it was another story… There is nowhere to go. The Ocean doesn’t calm down via human command or control. In fact, if I were dispositioned to believe the Ocean had a consciousness, I swear it would be vicious, uncaring, and prone to pile on unrelenting pain once it smelt blood (or vomit, in my case).
The situation initially bore out like this. Vomit, and feel decent immediately afterward. Take some water (a swig or two), and stand up near the bow or stern of the boat. Lying down in the stern cabin wasn’t really an option. I tried this initially, and threw up immediately. Standing up, eyes focused on the event horizon, or the distant shoreline, seemed to help, albeit only slightly. This technique is the same thing one does when flying in a test airplane. Focus the eyes outside the airplane window, and try to maintain some type of fixed reference point on the ground while the airplane and you rolls, pitches, and yaws about. This also explains why engineers can (I’ve seen it) become sick and disoriented in a Fixed Simulator on the ground in a laboratory. The human mind can be tricked into thinking it is moving even though body is not. Fascinating, as Spock would say.
I return to the subject of the boat. Getting back on the oars, I felt better. I got a two hour shift done, and then during my break period I tried to eat a bit of an apple. Pretty benign, right? I’m thinking, it’s a simple, easily digestible food, good energy, and it shouldn’t upset the stomach. Shortly thereafter I was heaving over the side of the boat again. And then again a few minutes later. Well, at least I could row. How long would this last without any energy replenishment?
As night approached we had dinner, and the waves had cooperated enough for me to have a good dinner with the guys and restore some of the lost nutrients and water in my system. I was famished. This again was probably not the best decision, but one way or another with the amount of energy expended rowing all day, I needed food. The Backpacker’s meal of re-hydrated stew and drink supplements tasted so good. Just like Goop Shots taste fantastic during a long bicycle ride around Lake Washington. During my first early night shift, nature called, which was performed on our trusty “DO IT BEST” hardware store bucket. With the waves increasing in amplitude and period, and no ability to see land or anything else besides the boat, my nausea returned while taking care of business. Two minutes later, I was throwing up what was left of my dinner over the side of the boat.
Jordan had the excellent idea of using the sea anchor as our progress was stalled by the shifting winds and waves. It was also good practice for the two experienced guys, Jordan and Greg, to remember how they deployed the anchor at sea in the dark. At this point I had become dehydrated. I could hold nothing down. As we waited for a few hours in the dark, with only our LED stern light as accompaniment to our quartet of misery, bobbing up and down, side to side, around and around, I found the only refuge I could…on deck curled upright with an insufficiently thin blanket to keep me warm. I was shivering from dehydration, barely conscience since I had not been able to rest the entirety of the day, and suffering. I don’t remember much afterwards until morning light, except that I skipped a shift after we removed the sea anchor and my head hurt from resting on the gunnel of the boat. As dawn approached, and the boat whipped around on sea anchor, I notice Jordan had taken solace in one of the red wet suits we had onboard. I wish I would have thought about that before suffering though the night. More importantly, at the time, why had Jordan not given me the other one? And so I crawled into one of the red wet suits, which gave me at least some decent amount of warmth.
Daylight. The sun was welcoming, and I crawled out of the red wetsuit. Trying to gather my senses, I spent the next hour sipping on a concoction of Emergen-C, some power nutrient powered supplement, and water. I took one sip every 2-3 minutes, trying to slowly acclimate myself to something in my stomach. The substance looked like grainy green sludge, and tasted like bile and sand. After a bit of time, I took a turn behind the oars. Thirty minutes into my shift, with the waves nearing 10 second periods and over 10 feet, I had enough. Interestingly, the contents of my stomach coming out were orange. Stuff went in green, and came out orange. This still perplexes me. Any doctor out there know why this happened?
During the day, I remember the constant and unrelenting waves eventually getting to Jordan. Unable to throw up and rid himself of the nausea, he stopped rowing and, still in his seat, picked up the spare bucket. Sticking two fingers down his throat, Jordan tried to induce himself to vomit. What ensued was the most pathetic five minutes of revolting “HUURCCGGG!!!” and “EEEYYYUUUHHHH!!!” cries of suffering. Jordan’s body would convulse with every attempt to vomit. As Greg and Adam were sleeping in the stern cabin, I could only imagine that they were too exhausted to protest against the dying sounds of a shrieking cat working out a hairball coming from a 6’6″ Viking on deck. Standing stern facing bow, I meekly smiled at his situation, empathizing with him, but also, in a perverse joy, glad that he too was experiencing at least some of the pain I had gone through. To share is to be human.
Adam showed me a technique that was supposed to help alleviate motion sickness. Using the thumb, pressure was applied on the inner wrist between the two big tendons. After a few minutes, I would switch to the other wrist. He told me that it would help. It may have if I wasn’t so physically depleted. I remember a big whale watching tour boat approaching us during the second day of our trip, and they must have wondered what was up with the guy waving with one hand, while the other hand was clasped to the waving wrist.
On our approach to the bar outside of Grays Harbor, the chop began to increase in intensity and violence. As Jordan noted in a previous blog, we seemed to handle it pretty well, considering its reputation. Standing stern, facing Adam, who was on shift rowing, I noticed now Adam too was beginning to suffer. Adam’s lips were open and teeth clenched, like John Elway, and his breathing was shallow and elevated. His eyes were covered by sunglasses, but I have no doubt that they were glazed over with fatigue. I too was breathing like Adam. We were a team of John Elway’s in the last two hours of our trip.
Fortunately, we rowed into the calm waters of Grays Harbor, and besides a few other misadventures (i.e. running into the sand bar inside the harbor the next morning), we all recovered at the local hotel in Westport.
More shenanigans to be explored in the next posting. Help us grow and ‘Like’ us on or Facebook Fan Page.