Wake up at 6am. Breakfast at 7am. Today we face a long, hard climb, but visually stunning. Open moorland progressing into high altitude desert. Lunch at Lava Tower (4,600m/15,100ft). Descended to Baranco camp at 4000m/13,100ft). Today we begin to notice the effects of altitude sickness. Nausea, fatigue, diarrhoea. It rained solidly all afternoon as well, so we’re soaked through. Pretty miserable afternoon. First mobile phone signal though, so happy to get messages from home.
Kilimanjaro Climb - Day 2
Wake at 6am after a very cold, wet night. After a quick breakfast of omelette, sausage, toast and fruit, we leave at 8am for a four-hour, steep climb to Shira camp at 3,300m/10,800ft. Walked through moorland, very pretty terrain. Shared our lunch with a striped forest mouse! Packed lunches consisted of juice, fried chicken, a boiled egg, jam sandwich and a small cake. It transpired that lunch was the same every day, and as the bread and cake began to dry out, they would deep fry the sandwiches.
Beef and rice for dinner. Great stars! There’s a cave at this camp where 70 porters used to sleep overnight. They now sleep in tents, but 3 or 4 to a tent and at least two slept in the mess tent.
Kilimanjaro Climb - Day 1
Breakfast at 7am. Final kit check and we’re off to meet our team for the week. Slightly embarrassed to find such a large and capable support team- 2 guides (Ramadhan and Kisanga), cook (Dennis), waiter (Chas) and nine porters to carry the kit. Recent regulations impose limitations of a maximum of 20kg weight to carry per porter, hence the large team. They carry our bags and their own kit as well as all the camping and cooking gear and food.
We start walking from Machame Gate along a gentle incline through rain forest for about six hours to our first overnight stop at Machame Camp. Saw blue monkeys high up in the trees above the path. The camp itself looks a little like a refugee camp, with tents pitched on sloping muddy terrain. Of course, being a rain forest, it’s very wet weather. We have a ‘mess tent’ for my brothers and me, where we eat a meal of fried fish and potatoes. There’s no alcohol allowed on the mountain because of the risks of complications with adjusting to the altitude during the week. Apparently Italian and Russian clients are notorious for not complying!
Kilimanjaro Climb - Day 0
3am start to catch plane from Edinburgh to Amsterdam and then onto Kilimanjaro. First glimpse of Kilimanjaro from the plane! Arrive safely at hotel after a hair-raising journey through town, past a jack-knifed lorry on the way (African drivers notorious for making up their own rules of the road).
A Scottish Perspective of Pre-hospital Care and Emergency Medicine in Norway - Part 5
A day in the life of… a Clinical Teaching Fellow
Well done Medic One runners!
A huge congratulations to Dr Angela Oglesby, Chairperson of Medic One, and her team of runners who successfully completed the Aviemore half marathon on Sunday.
As they nurse their blisters and aching limbs there is still time for you to donate by clicking here.
A day in the life of....an ACCS trainee
Medic One at The Casualty Cup 2014
A year of innovation in the ED…moving forwards.
It is now a year since the Kaizen Chief team was formed, 9 months since the morning ED huddle started and 6 months since the department embraced the change to our triage system brought about by the introduction of the One Patient Pathway. I would love to say it has been a breeze, but that would be a lie. There have been highs and lows, sleepless nights. Above all this, though, there has been amazing team work, both from the Kaizen Chiefs and from the wider ED team. Our team is awesome and together we have transformed the way we work, the results we get and our patients’ experience.