Dehydration and hyperthermia

July 9

Twice during my first week in the desert I got dehydrated. It was my fault, I wasn’t drinking enough water and during a patrol when I felt tired I didn’t say so or take breaks because the other person I was with wasn’t. The fact that she is an experienced hiker in her home state and travels to the mountains, and the fact that she told me it is ok to stop and take breaks whenever I need to, should have registered in my mind but for some reason didn’t. We took a few which was enough for her but not for me. All I had to have done was to say I needed more and it would have been alright.
Anyways, we were walking about 2.5 miles to a trail that migrants routinely use to drop off water, and each of us were carrying three one gallon water bottles as well as several snack packs. I felt more and more tired but decided to tell myself brilliantly that it’s only another hilltop away, so I kept ploughing ahead. The sweat was initially pouring from all parts of my body but as I kept going I began realizing that I wasn’t sweating anymore. However, I did begin to feel a bit dizzy and lightheaded. A good indicator that it’s time to slow down, but not for me. I began urging myself on and thinking that we were only a short distance away. Anyway, I began wheezing and gasping and I realized it was time to sit down. My partner was very concerned and reiterated it is ok to stop and take a break when needed. We had some water and ate, and then I tried to stand up but wasn’t able to. My body wasn’t co-operating. I dragged myself over to some shade and lay down for a while, and wasn’t able to get up again. My partner was getting even more worried. It was pretty scary. I took a few very long minutes and had a lot more water and was eventually able to get up and we continued for the very short distance (by that time it was very short) that was ahead of us, before we turned back. We took a lot of breaks and I learned my lesson. G is one of our camp leaders and an amazing person to work with, and has tons of experience. She said there is nothing wrong or unnatural with getting tired or exhausted in the desert, it wasn’t meant for people to be trekking through. She just told me to next time take breaks and I definitely will.

My second little episode happened a little later- the next day to be exact. Our Dodge got stuck in the wash, which was soaked with rain the night before. Our Dodge actually always gets stuck in mud, I personally counted three times when that happened and we needed to dig it out using shovels and wooden planks, more than once we finally had to get a Tow truck. That day an Arivaca resident arrived and tried helping us with his jeep and pushed us a bit, and then his car got stuck. Of course we went to help him out, we couldn’t leave him like this after he helped us. Anyways, a group of us were digging furiously and taking turns, and the work was gruelling and it was very hot outside. I learned my lesson and was taking breaks and not trying to be Superman. However I wasn’t drinking enough water during my time there up to so far- believe it or not, the recommended dosage of water is 2 to 3 gallons a day in this sort of heat, particularly if you are being physically active. I was getting by with one and thought it was all good, it actually felt like too much.
Other mitigating factors are that I got dehydrated the day before and the med people tell us that the probability of someone getting dehydrated a day after they have already been dehydrated is about 75%, and that I spent an hour before that digging a pit for our compost.
Anyways, same story. I got pretty tired, needed to take a seat, couldn’t get back up. Then when I did I decided I better get back to digging and that wasn’t a good idea. The other people urged me to go wait in the car and have water, when I tried drinking it though I could barely take it to my lips and someone had to help me. I remember J helping me with that. The funny part about being dehydrated is the fact that you don’t really know you are, it feels like you are tired and dehydrated people often get irritable or superexcited or want to do things that are unreasonable. I felt I was only a bit tired and having rested for what seemed way too long, I just needed to get out there and help the crew. I kept trying to get out of the car and join the digging, I was mad at myself for getting tired so quickly. J heroically kept pushing me back in the car and telling me to cool it and just drink, that it was going to be fine. Eventually I got really dizzy again and J helped me go back to camp. I was taken to the med tent and P, one of the camp’s volunteers and a nursing student who is absolutely amazing at her job already, gave me desert first aid- got me to lie down on the cot, applied cold packs, checked vital signs, put a cold compress around my head. I fell asleep and slept for an hour and a half, after having gotten up I was still a bit tired but better and didn’t go out on any patrols on that day.
Since then I had been drinking the recommended amount of water, although initially it was tough to stomach that much in one day, especially since it is always warm and often tastes like plastic. I went out on more patrols after that and was fine.

What happened to me may seem a bit comical, and I probably made a bit of an ass out of myself trying to get back to digging when I wasn’t really able to easily stand. Some other volunteers that week also suffered some medical problems, including some sprained ankles and effects from the sun.

For the migrants though, dehydration is no laughing matter. I did some reading on it, and how it works. The body’s initial responses to dehydration are thirst to increase the amount of water going in to your body, and less going to the washroom to decrease the amount coming out. Most migrants start off with water bottles by them, although it is not humanly possible to carry a healthily sufficient amount for such a journey- considering the fact that the amount recommended in the desert is 2-3 gallons a day. Often, human smugglers (called coyotes), many of whom are doing this for money only, will tell the migrants it is a short walk. People are sometimes told it will take only a day. It is more like five.

People walk for days, and for the first while it probably doesn’t seem too bad. Then the symptoms start to kick in. There are cramps that may begin to occur. Mouths get dry, the eyes stop making tears, people become tired more and more easily. Whereas once the traveler was sweating profusely, now there is no more sweat coming out. In other cases people get nauseous and start to throw up.

I experienced some of these symptoms. I was able to stop, get hydrated, take a rest; and in the second case also medical aid and I was fine. With the migrants it is a different story entirely. Getting weaker means often falling down and hurting yourself, or simply being unable to carry on. Most coyotes will keep going, and leave the person with a gallon of water and some food. After all, there are others who need to be taken to the dropoff place, and there is money to be made. Most migrants who NMD comes across, as well as those who die, are people who have fallen out of their groups.

Then things get really bad. The body needs to maintain cardiac output so the heart starts beating faster and faster and make the blood vessels constrict so the blood pressure remains the same and vital organs are getting the same amount of blood flow. Of course if there are no liquids, this fails. People become more and more confused and exhausted and tired as the brain and body organs receive less and less blood. Finally the victim lapses into a coma, the organs shut down, and death occurs.

Another cause of death is hyperthermia, when the body overheats. The intensity of suffering and pain that this involves makes dehydration almost look merciful. A person’s skin is literally baked by the sun. It becomes hot and dry and hurts a lot. It is like sunburn, only it gets worse and worse. It eventually becomes red, as the blood vessels dilate. Lips dry up and become swollen. Nausea and vomiting results, in addition to terrible and splitting headaches. People get delusional as their brain is fried by the sun, and may seem confused or hostile. Small children (who also make up the large numbers who make such trips) get seizures. This is all coupled with the searing pain of the sun that beats down on them nonstop. People have been found naked, they have taken their clothes off trying to escape the heat. In other cases the corpses have their mouths filled with sand, people begin to hallucinate and believe that the sand and rocks around them is actually water, so they shove it in their mouths. Others try to bury themselves under the soil, trying to escape from the terrible heat which of course does not go away except at night.

Usually death results as a combination of these two causes. Of course unless it is a result of a flashflood, hypothermia, an attack by bandits, or other ways in which hundreds of people die out here on an annual basis. Someone’s son, daughter, wife, girlfriend, fiancé, husband, father, mother, grandparent, friend; another body in the desert left for vultures or bugs or the weather to dispose of. Many believe that the number of bodies that are found are only a small portion of the real death rate. In an area of tens of thousands of square miles of hostile and inhospitable terrain, I don’t find this hard to believe.

For more information about how dehydration and hyperthermia work, copy and paste these links into your URL. The last one is particularly horrific and is an excerpt from a section of a book describing the agony and suffering the migrants endure before death. It is hard to stomach and may be difficult to get through. Yet it is nothing more than the reality of what takes place here almost every day of the year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthermia
http://www.medicinenet.com/dehydration/article.htm

http://www.tucsonsamaritans.org/desert-medicine.html WARNING extremely graphic.