Tuesday, May 26th

It was Tuesday at 5pm when I felt my first symptoms. I had just finished leading an expedition with my 5 traveling companions to the local food market. We had been camping for a week and needed to restock supplies in anticipation of a long, cold trip up 14,000 foot mountains where Mongolia intersects China and Russia. I’ll describe my five friends in another posting, but they were quintessential travelers, all of them were between 23 and 30 years old, traveling around the world for a minimum of one year, some of them for up to three years. We had 2 guys from Canada, a Japanese, an Israeli and our sole female from Spain.
The excursion into the market was tough, we had an hour before it closed, no one spoke English and we had to buy enough food to last us. That meant making “moo” sounds to confirm with the butcher that the meat we bought was cow and tasting all of the butter we found until we found one that wouldn’t make us sick. That took time. Anyways, when I got back into the van, I collapsed from exhaustion and felt a strong fever overcome me. I fell asleep for an hour, and woke up as we began a 5,000 foot climb in our van. Our driver told us we would be spending a night in the mountains until we reached the city of Olgii the following day to obtain the proper border permits. We needed permits because the region is so politically sensitive, you need permission just to get near the border, even if you don’t intend to cross it, and we needed different permits from China and Russia.
We pitched our tents on a gorgeous slope and I went to bed with a 103F fever, I had no other symptoms. I prayed it would go away the next morning. When I woke up, I went to the bathroom and it was gloriously sunny. I went into my tent to pack my sleeping bag. When I reemerged from my tent 30 minutes later, we were in the middle of a blinding hailstorm. My fever had gone away, but I had a searing headache. I took some Tylenol, my second to last dose, and the headache went away. It was now Wednesday.

My tent and the van


















Wednesday

We took some torturous roads through amazing landscapes to get to Olgii and arrived around 7pm. We found a hostel, ate dinner and made a beeline for the local disco. I felt fine at that point, so we partied pretty hard with the locals. It was amazing to walk outside at 2am and see so many stars. Luckily our hostel was 300 feet away.

The disco...at 1AM:


Thursday

I woke up with a terrible headache that was probably from the night before. I found some breakfast (boiled sheep) and downed water. We all climbed into the van, as we had to travel 3 hours to an Army outpost to get the final permit for Russia. When I got in the car, I noticed my fever came back so I took my temperature, it was 102F, I started downing water. It took us all day at that Army outpost to get our permits and before long it was too late to start our trip out to the mountains so we decided to head back to Olgii, get a solid meal and night’s sleep back at the hostel. I was feeling pretty delirious and mentioned I needed to good meal to see whether I would be up for the trip. By 8pm, after a ride over more bumpy dirt roads and mountains, we returned to Olgii, and went to eat. My fever was still about 102F and I ordered a huge meal. The waitress started making fun of me because I ordered an enormous meat broth soup to start, lamb cutlets as an entree and a cucumber and tomato salad. I was pretty impressed with her English, while still tough to understand, for being out here in the middle of nowhere, it was the best I had heard in weeks. We were actually at the nicest restaurant in town and there was an American park ranger visiting the local chief park ranger to teach them about maintaining National Parks. The two of them sat next to our table, I played with the Park Ranger’s little boy as he came up to our table. The local park ranger's English was 90% perfect. Ironically, meeting the park ranger and the waitress that night became more important than I would know.
My fever broke when I finished the broth soup, but I still felt extremely lethargic. I returned to the room I shared with the Israeli and Spanish girl and went to bed, my fever had come back to 103F and I felt terrible. I was out of Tylenol.
In the middle of the night I woke up with the strongest set of shivering I have ever felt in my life. I put on 3 layers of clothes, my winter jacket and climbed back into my sub-zero sleeping bag. The chills wouldn’t stop. At one point the shivering was so bad, I was breathing so hard my roommates woke up. I was panting as if I was sprinting a 100M dash. They asked me what was wrong but I couldn’t tell them: my breathing was taking all of my oxygen. I managed to say, “Wait, wait, almost finished” and they just stared at me. I knew the shivering had to stop, but when? It was now 30 minutes in. I quickly did the math in my head on what point would I run out of energy and I calculated about 1 hour before body would just collapse. But luckily, the shivering subsided. My fever did not. We retook my temperature. 104F. I told them to go back to bed, we would figure out in the morning what to do next.
Friday.

I woke up and my fever was down to 102F. I felt terrible though, my head was killing me and my muscles were sore from the night before. Because this was a Muslim part of the country, most stores and restaurants were closed on Friday, so after walking for 20 minutes, I found some breakfast…more meat broth. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to get better, so I knew I had to call someone. I had no idea what these symptoms would be; I ran through my wilderness survival book and also found an internet café to look stuff up. But my head hurt too much to read. I finally figured out Skype and called my cousin who is a doctor in LA. Over a very bad phone connection, she said: “I think you have signs of malaria, rolling fevers and chills with no other symptoms”. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind and when I wiki-ed it, sure enough appeared textbook symptoms of Malaria. I felt even worse now and I knew I had to get out of this place within a week, or I would die. Sounds dramatic…but if you are in the least dense country on earth, with no paved roads, ~1,000 miles from the nearest hospital, with no one speaking English and a mind-blowing fever, you too would feel death is just around the corner.
I walked over to the hostel and told my friends I had to sadly break off the trip. We were on day 12 of 23 and I was majorly bummed, but I couldn’t see myself going into the mountains for four days with this fever. And they couldn’t help me, so I told them they should go on.
At 11am, they left and I felt a strong set of chills. I’m not sure if it was my illness or my brain realizing I was alone.
I made a beeline for the internet café and looked up the number for my emergency evacuation team. Normally I carry the number with me, but I couldn’t remember where it was and I felt too ill to search. Eventually, I reached my insurance company over the internet and they said the words I think everyone loves to hear from their insurance company “Um, we actually outsourced this policy to another company, you’ll have to call them.” So I called this other company and they said “Ummm, we can’t seem to find your policy anywhere.”
Luckily my iPhone was working and I could receive calls clearly, I just didn’t know how to make outbound calls. The guidebook I had didn’t have the proper instructions on dialing out so I was stuck telling the insurance company to call me when they figured things out. Skype was terrible at best.
I knew I had to find a way out. First stop, the local airline office. While this town is remote, they have a flight twice a week to the capital city. Sometimes the plane doesn’t even show up, but the internet lady told me there was a plane coming tomorrow. I HAD TO get on the plane. I went to the airline office and after an hour of trying to get them to understand me, they told me, sorry, no seats for two weeks. I asked about seats from nearby towns (15 hours driving), and they said yes….but in 4 days. At this rate, with the fever I had…I didn’t have four days.
At 230pm I looked in my guidebook and noticed a tourism office where there were supposed to be English speakers. I walked over there and it turned out to be the Park Ranger from the night before! She said she could help me figure out the phone system and a way out of town, but told me to come back at 4pm. I told her about my sickness and how I needed to get to the capital. She mentioned there was another little girl in town that was sick with fluid in her lungs, and looking to get on a plane as well, but hadn’t been able to for a week. She might die. I thought to myself “Well, if the locals can’t find a way on that plane, I’ll never get a seat!” I mentioned my last option: Could I get a driver to take me by car? (70 hours minimum)
I was very hesitant to take a car. We had already driven the 1,000 miles out here by van and I knew it was full of hot deserts, cold nights on mountains tops that still had blizzards in June and few towns in between. It was a real no-man’s land. I felt that if I took that trip, my body wouldn’t be able to cope with those kinds of weather conditions.
So I left and sat down in front of my hotel. I assessed my options. Plane tomorrow? No. Plane in four days? maybe. Car? Maybe. Emergency helicopter? The insurance company situation was still a mess.
Well, the helicopter answer came quickly. The 2nd insurance company figured out there was a THIRD insurance company that was supposed to be dealing with me, and around 3pm, “Europe Emergency Assistance”, out of Washington DC, called me and assured me they were on the case. Marcel, my case manager, “had a guy” in Mongolia that knew there was a 10am flight the next day to the capital and he in turn “had a guy” inside the airline that could get me a seat. While this sounds shady, I knew that we were actually making progress here. The fact that this guy knew the proper flight schedule for this tiny town was a huge sign. But I told Marcel that the flight was full. I had already pounded the table hard at the airline office and hadn’t been able to get a ticket! We needed to consider an emergency air ambulance or helicopter. He agreed and said he would prepare a Plan B.
This emergency evacuation posed a problem. Insurance companies don’t authorize evacuations without having their doctor talk to a doctor on the ground. The only problem is that there were NO DOCTORS where I was! Well, technically there were, but it’s like saying an auto mechanic is a computer scientist. I begged and pleaded with Marcel to consider the option he assured me they would, if I couldn’t get on the plane. I actually believed him, but I laid it on thick. I said,”With my fever the way it is, remember Marcel, my life is in your hands.”
I went to meet the Park Ranger at 4pm, but she said she had a meeting that suddenly came up and was very apologetic. I was dismayed as I had hoped she could tell me how I could make a phone call from the local telecom office, so I was instead left to figure it out myself, before the office closed at 5pm. It was probably the best decision I made. When I got there, the staff struggled to figure out how to call America, but eventually they found a manager that looked like she had worked there for ages. While they tried to dial my number, I saw that they used “0011” as a prefix and tried it on my iPhone. It worked!!!
I left and looked at the clock. I was starving. I made a beeline for the restaurant I went to the previous night. The waitress took one look at me (the one that made fun of me the previous night) and said “What’s wrong with you? You look like death!” I told her my story and asked for some meat broth. She quickly brought some and I slurped it down. When she came with the check, we made small talk. She was super nice and laughed at my dumb jokes. To the point the other waitresses were making fun of her laugh. The whole situation was pretty hilarious. In any case, I asked her if she knew if there was any place to buy medicine. She said there was a place in town, far away, that might help me and came outside to walk with me part of the way. With a map she scrawled on a piece of paper, I eventually found it. Except walking into a pharmacy that doesn’t speak English and uses Russian characters makes life a little difficult. They had a total of 200 drugs, but 20 minutes later, I walked out with paracetemol (Tylenol equivalent).
I looked at my clock, I had 20 minutes to five. I had two options. I could put my money down for that flight that left in four days from a city far away, or I could wait until tomorrow, hoping for Marcel to come through with a ticket out of this city. I decided against buying the ticket, betting that Marcel would probably send a helicopter if I couldn’t get on the plane. For some strange reason, my instinct told me to withdraw $350 in local money. I didn’t need it, but I figured I might as well get a wad of money in case I needed to pay someone off for something and the banks were closed (the weekend was coming up).
At 5pm, I sat down in front of my hostel on a bench and collapsed in exhaustion. This was it. As the fever came back to a raging 104F, I sadly thought about my options. I knew there were no more seats on the plane. The flight in four days would reach the capital in the same time driving there would. Either I would die in pain waiting for the plane, or die somewhere in the middle of the desert, shivering in pain. By the time I arrived in UB, it would be Day 9 of my fever, and given how increasingly badly each night had been, I feared the night ahead. I buried my head in my hands and starting thinking if I needed to say goodbye. That's why I took this picture of me.



At 545pm my phone rang, it was Marcel. He said: “Well I have good news and bad news. The good news is we got a ticket, the bad news is the ticket office closes in 30 minutes.” I said to him, “WHAT? HOW?” He said he didn’t know, but that his guy had made me a reservation. Then I told him that the airline office was closed, the agent himself had told me he was leaving at 5pm. Marcel said, no, his information was that it would still be open, someone had just talked to the agent. So I said to Marcel, “OK, I’m going to walk over there, and you’re going to stay on the phone with me.” So I walked the 300 feet over to the airline office and banged on the door. It opened, to my amazement. I told the guy, “Ticket? Tomorrow?” He said no. Marcel heard his response over the phone and said, “Tell him to look it up in the computer.” So I gave the agent my passport and said “Computer! Computer! Look! Look!” And the agent walked over and looked me up. When he furled his brow and let out a confused grunt, I knew I had the ticket. I smiled. Good God, how did I get this lucky? And to add to my luck, I had the $305 dollars for the ticket…. the banks were closed, but I had the money. An hour later I walked out with a ticket.
One thing bothered me though. The ethical flag in my head went off, a product of many years of thinking about this classic ethical situation. I had a ticket now. I was going to be saved. But then I said to myself, there’s a little girl that needs a ticket too! Why do I get a ticket and why didn’t she get a ticket? Shouldn’t I be giving her my ticket? Who needs it more? What is the right thing to do here? Ugh, saving my own life even had ethical questions.
My internal debate was interrupted when Marcel called me and then told me I needed to see a doctor to be certified to fly. I was confused because I knew no one would be checking at the airport, how would the airline know I was sick? He said “his guy” who got me the ticket, now named TJ, wanted a doctor’s report. He said TJ even found a hospital and a doctor in this little town and a doctor was waiting for me. I was amazed and confused. The guidebook said there was no hospital and my conversations indicated there were no real doctors. So I set out for the “hospital” and found it abandoned. Ironically though, the Park Ranger called me and said her meeting was over, I told her I needed to see a doctor and she agreed to pick me up and take me. I had her talk to TJ and they talked for 30 minutes, clearly disagreeing as to whether or not I needed this “doctor’s approval” to get on the plane. In the end, we went to a doctor, who took my blood pressure and temperature and then told me to take my medicine and get on the plane if my temperature dropped to 100F. Otherwise, I shouldn’t get on the plane.
At 9pm, I went back to my favorite restaurant with my favorite waitress and had a decent meal. I told her I was leaving tomorrow and thanked her for her help with the pharmacy, it was the only medicine that gave me a chance to break my fever. She asked me if I would ever come back and visit her. I said, I hoped to, one day. She said, “Well, I’ll be here. My name is Arka. I wish you the best life.” I smiled and waved.
I packed my stuff up and got ready to quickly leave the hostel in the morning. The airline ticket agent ironically was going to take me to the airport. When I bought my ticket, ge mentioned that he was the gate agent and baggage handler too and would be happy to take me! At 10pm, I called my cousin to give her an update on my condition and went to bed. I had a slight fever, but I was relieved, I was going to civilization.
At 1AM, now Saturday, I woke up and heard a lot of commotion. Mostly it was a bunch of partiers in some of the other rooms nearby. It didn’t bother me but it sounded like there was both laughing and shouting going on. I drank some water and heard a whistle which made me look out the window. I noticed about 20 police officers and identified some captains wearing white hats. A few had lighted batons to direct traffic, but they were all huddled across the street, standing around. It looked like a sobriety checkpoint and some police were dealing with drunks because I noticed they wrestled one guy to the ground. It was dark (no streetlights), so I couldn’t really tell. I went back to bed.
At 2:30AM, there was a loud knock. I opened my door and yelled: “WHAT IS THIS?” In front of me were 5 people. They were so heavily clothed in layers of surgical gowns, masks, goggles, rubber boots and surgical hats that I couldn’t tell whether they were male or female. I looked at them and said….”Are you here for me?” A voice piped up and said, “Yes, we are here for you.” I recognized the voice, it was the Park Ranger. I said, “OH MY GOD. WHAT HAVE I DONE?” She said, “The government believes you have the Swine Flu. You are Mongolia #1 Public Health Target. You are surrounded by all of the police officers in this town. And with me are all of the doctors and nurses in this state (5, for the record). They consider you very dangerous.”
Then I burst out laughing and said, “You guys are insane. I’ll cooperate, but this is the craziest thing ever. I do not have any swine flu symptoms. I just have a fever!” Then I made fake cough and runny nose sounds and said “NO!”, hoping the doctors would understand.
It didn’t work. They just came into my room and sat down to interview me. It turned out I was their worst nightmare. As I described to them in detail my travels, they gasped as they found out I had been to 7 countries in the past month and when they asked me where I had been in that town, I replied: 2 restaurants, a pharmacy, post office, 3 airline offices, supermarket, the telecom office, another hotel, the tourist center, and this hotel. I left out the disco. They shook their head in fear. I had “infected” their whole town.
Then I asked whether I would get on the plane tomorrow? And the translation that came back was maybe, provided I didn’t have a fever. But the head of their CDC in the capital city was calling the shots and they didn’t have a response from him yet. It was clear these guys were taking orders from the capital.
They then told me to pack my stuff up. I was to be taken elsewhere for observation overnight. I had no option and took my backpack and moved out. It was clear I had awakened the whole hostel. As it turns out, the police had come into the 12 room hostel and told everyone in the hostel to stop partying and stay in their rooms, as there was a diseased man in another room. The man I had seen being wrestled to the ground at 1AM was actually drunk and arguing with the police about them breaking up the party. As I walked through the lobby, the hostel owner looked at me like she was clearly was dragged out of bed and scared at the disease I had. I told her I left money for my stay on my bed. She looked shell shocked. When I left the hotel, I saw the full drama I had caused. There were 10 more heavily masked “health officials” outside, backed up by 20+ police officers. The police had shut down the whole block, with police cars on each end. My hotel was roped off with official police tape. There was a paddy wagon, 4 police jeeps and several more cars that I identified as cars for police captains. Everyone just stared. I managed to take one picture…with my hotel in the background. If that doesn’t freak you out…or make you laugh, I don’t know what will.
I took pictures of my room before I went to bed



What I saw when I opened my door:



Outside the hotel...


So we pulled up to a random 3-room building and this was when I asked whether this was a hospital. The translator says, no, this is where we take people to die. I see three or four windows filled with people wearing masks and surgical robes, staring at my police van. And they weren't wearing just one robe, they looked like Pillsbury doughboys with all the layers they had on.
We sit in the van as the doctor keeps talking to the CDC in the capital about where to keep me. They can’t decide between the “hospital” and the “hostel”. I ask about my flight tomorrow and my translator says, “The capital wants to keep you here for at least 3 days. You will not fly tomorrow.” THREE DAYS?
This is now a full on emergency. DEFCON 5.  I call my team in Washington and give them an update. I have been placed into custody by the government, who won’t let me fly and I feel deathly ill. Time to activate Plan B. So I talk first to my case manager (Marcel has left for the evening, I have a new one for this shift). Then I talk to my nurse on the team. Then I talk to the logistics coordinator for my evacuation. I was put on speakerphone and talked with a team that was now numbering close to a half dozen. I appreciated that they fully grasped the gravity of the situation, to the point that they said what I was thinking: It’s time to alert the US State Department and call in the Calvary (diplomatic pressure).
Having traveled a lot, I’m quite familiar with how Embassies are organizationally structured. Everyone knows about the Ambassador, but because I live in the greatest nation on Earth, we have created a phenomenal unit called “Citizen Services”, meant to help citizens wherever in the world we have a presence (embassy). I will argue the level of service they provide is the envy of every other country, although the British have a decent one too. Within each US Embassy in every country in the world, is an officer meant to specifically deal with any issues and emergencies that arise with US citizens, whether it be medical, legal, financial or even sending your body back to the US if you die. It might be the middle of the night but there is always someone on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and they are well versed in emergencies. They’re called the Duty Warden. I call them "My overseas 911" Look it up on any embassy website. And there you will find their number. Always ready. Always helpful. Except I couldn’t get through here at 3AM! (It turned out my evacuation team was on the phone with them) So I did something I have never done. I have spent so many hours in customs lines; I have memorized the inside of all that tiny text in my passport. In it is a line that says, “Should you have an emergency, Call the US Dept of State at 202-433-7300 for assistance.” And I called that number. I laughed as I navigated the menus and a cheery “customer service agent” came on. Ron, my agent, told me there is always someone on duty to help with these kinds of emergencies, but she was in a meeting. Of course, there is always a backup sitting at a desk and I reached Sheila, who readily absorbed my situation.
In my deliriousness, I told her I needed a bunch of things. One, we needed to get the phone number for the swine flu specialist at the CDC. Second, we needed a chief doctor of the State Dept to get on the phone and talk to the Mongolian CDC to convince them I didn’t have swine flu. Third, we needed to wake up the US Doctor on call in Mongolia (every Embassy has one) and get him to start pounding on the doctors at the Mongolian CDC. In short, we needed to throw the book at the Mongolian government. If I didn’t get on the plane tomorrow morning, we were going to need to alert the Ambassador and get him involved. She laughed at the last one but said she would work on the first three. I got off the phone and my evacuation team called to update me. They said they had actually gotten a hold of the US Embassy here in Mongolia and had given them the update. They were waking up their Chief Health Officer and the Embassy was going to start talking to the Mongolian government. There wasn’t a lot they could do, because Mongolia’s health laws were changed in light of swine flu to give the government absolute rights over anyone suspected with swine flu, and all they could do is apply pressure to get me on the plane. My evacuation team also said that they were now activating Plan B, which was to get an Air Ambulance from overseas (I think it would come in from Hong Kong) to come and pick me up. It was clear the evacuation team realized that if the Mongolian government thought I was insanely sick, I must be. They wouldn’t need to talk to a doctor to figure that out.
I was relieved. If I didn’t get on the plane, at least I would be evacuated.
Let’s take a minute here to stop and assess what was going on because that’s exactly what I did. Here I was sitting in a van at 3:45am full of doctors trying to figure out what to do with me. They were talking to a team of health officials in the capital city who didn’t know what to do with me. I also had my Park Ranger translator. The van was surrounded by 20 police officers, all of whom looked like they got pulled out of bed and put their uniforms on. And this hospital just outside my van was a team of people waiting for me to come inside so they could “disinfect” me. I had a team of at least a half dozen in Washington DC working on my evacuation. The duty warden at the US Embassy in Mongolia had been alerted and was waking the right people up. The State Department in the US was working on getting the right people in the US on the phone. I broke out in laughter just thinking about it. My translator asked me what was so funny. I retorted, “My life.” She laughed. The doctors stared at us.
Finally at 4AM, they decided to have me sleep at the “hospital”. I went inside and they said they wanted to check my temperature every hour. I said sure, whatever they want. Secretly, I had a glimmer of hope if I kept my temperature down, they would let me get on the plane. I didn’t tell my evacuation team this, I wanted them to keep Plan B in motion. So I crawled into my bed and took a double dose of Paracetemol.
Taking my temperature was a funny experience. I had an electric oral thermometer and the local doctors had a mercury one they put in my armpit. After the first experience, I pulled out my thermometer and said, “No, I’ll use mine, you guys can read the output.” They agreed. I kind of felt bad that here I was, 15,000 miles away from my home, traveling with a backpack and I had a better thermometer than they did. Later, when I did leave, I almost wanted to leave the thermometer behind, but I needed it for the plane ride if something went wrong. So through the night, they would knock on my door and make motions towards their mouth, indicating it was time for me to take my temperature. And every time…it was 98.6F.

In the "hospital", they were trying to decide what to do with me:



I woke up at about 7am and couldn’t fall back asleep, the adrenaline was still running. I was worried... what if they didn’t let me take my own air ambulance? What about food? Water? Medicine? I knew I had to stop worrying about every little thing. There were plenty of people already worrying for me. It was out of my hands. I had to take my mind off of this and on to something else. A couple of things did it for me. First, I smiled at this giant wall outside my window. It was barren, except for two hearts with two sets of initials. I laughed, some things are the same wherever you are in the world. Then I saw this monster of a shaggy dog. He looked so happy and kept me entertained for 20 minutes. Finally, I laughed at the mural on my wall. Here’s a picture of it, it sure lifted my spirits!





At 930am, I looked at my watch. I was pretty certain the window to catch my flight had closed. The plane was supposed to depart at 945am. I stared out the window and knew evacuation was my only hope. The US Embassy called me to check in on me. Linda, the duty officer, was super nice and said they were trying to do what they could, but the Mongolians had the upper hand since they think I have swine flu. She told me to call her directly if anything else developed. My case manager called me and told me they were getting a plane in the air shortly, they had sent out requests to multiple teams around the world and were waiting for a response. My case manager assured me the first response would be dispatched to pick me up. So while things were looking badly by missing the flight, I had confidence something was going to happen. And even better, my fever was gone. I just felt weak.
At 1000AM, I called my sister. I had told no one about this whole mess, there were already too many players to manage. I figured it was now time to update people since the situation had stabilized and I had a good sense of the upcoming options. When I was on the phone, a male nurse rushed in and shoved some medicine in my face, I said, “NO, I don’t know what that is!” He said “Antibiot!” I said “I ain’t taking some wierd Russian antibiotics!” I told my sister I had to jump off. He then said, “Ulaanbaatar! Ulaanbaatar!” and used his hand to make the motion of an airplane taking off. I said incredulously, “Me? Fly? Ulaanbaatar?” He nodded yes, but pointed to the medicine. It was clear they would only let me go if I took medicine to keep the fever down, and I pulled out my own medicine and he said “OK”. He then made motions for me to pack up my stuff and get ready. While I did this, he kept looking out the window, and 5 minutes later, 2 police cars came and out jumped 5 officers and a man in a suit, all of whom were wearing surgical masks. I walked outside and into one of the police cars. They made me wear not one, but two surgical masks! They wouldn’t let me go in the airport; they took my passport and ticket and checked me in themselves. Then I walked through security and they made me wait outside, on the tarmac, away from the waiting room. Here’s a picture of that. I guess they hadn’t thought of the fact I would be on a plane for four hours with these poor souls ;)

So it turns out the plane was late, and at the last minute the Mongolian CDC gave the go-ahead for me to get on the plane since there were no signs of a fever overnight. The police boarded me on the plane first and I promptly took off my masks so that the other passengers wouldn’t freak out. I called the evacuation team: I was on the plane. Call off the Calvary. Call the Embassy. Call the State Department. I was going to civilization.

My escorts



The dirt airstrip and the town from the air.



I’m here in the capital city now and I feel fine. I’ve had my blood drawn and will find out if I have malaria on Tuesday. The truth is, today (Monday) is the first day I’ve strongly felt I don’t have malaria. From last Tuesday until yesterday, I had the classic symptoms and the timing was perfect (30 days since leaving Burma and Cambodia). But I’ve been on antibiotics for a few days and I feel pretty close to normal. I feel bad about the chaos I caused and wondered if I should of stuck it out, out there in the wilderness. I’m also wondering what happened to that little girl. But then I have to remind myself, what if the opposite happened, and here I was, on Day 8, still with a 103-104F fever, not knowing if I had malaria, without antibiotics and a world away from any chance of being saved.

I'm Lucky.

I think I’m coming home now.


My Post-Script

About a month after I returned to the US, I had lunch with a very close friend who I’ve known since middle school. I had spent the past four weeks vegging out on my parents' couch and had not been very social. I was looking for a mental boost.

If any of you met my friend Kate at my wedding, you’d know it's impossible not to catch some of her contagious energy, so I was hoping some would rub off and I mustered the strength to go out and meet up.

I met Kate at a particularly nice restaurant in Georgetown (Washington DC). For some reason, I was soaking in every minute detail I encountered. Years later, I still remember that day particularly well. It was a sunny and warm June day. I remember waiting at the table and admiring how the very heavy, unscratched silver cutlery gleamed in the sunlight while resting on a very thick and spotless white cotton tablecloth. My back was to M Street, because I remember looking in awe at the restaurant's richly carved mahogany wood walls.

After she arrived, I told her about my trip to Mongolia. It felt great to catch up with an old friend. 

Since I only make it to DC about once a year, the following summer I saw Kate again.  When we caught up, she surprised me by asking: “Are you feeling better?”  I said “Sure! I'm feeling great. How come?”

She remarked: “Well, when I last saw you, you had just come back from Mongolia. And I didn’t want to tell you this at the time, but you looked terrible. You looked like you had just come back from seeing death. Not only were you skinnier and a little paler, but there was this slowness to you I’ve never seen.  Your body was at table, but YOU were somewhere else. It was as if you were 90 years old and were at peace that the end was near. “

I spent my whole 4 hour flight back thinking about what she said. And since then, I’ve realized, and accepted, that ever since Mongolia, I’ve largely been at peace with the idea that any day now, the end could be very near. 

So I’ll just sit back and enjoy each day, one day at a time.