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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2023-11-28 06:00:57.

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Chewy-Boot

My blood oxygen is below 50, unsure what to do

Originally posted to r/kilimanjaro & r/Mountaineering

Thanks to u/soayherder for suggesting this BoRU

TRIGGER WARNING: Near death experience, life threatening medical emergency

MOOD SPOILER: No permanent damage, reddit being reddit

Fleece recommendations available in Australia?  June 2, 2023

I’m climbing Kili in two weeks and have yet to settle on a fleece. Coming from Australia I have no frame of reference for how cold it gets, so would love some recommendations on brands and models to trust.

How many porters does a trip operator normally provide?  June 13, 2023

My tour operator just told me that my solo private tour will include a guide, a cook, and 6 (six!) porters. This seems like way too many for a one person tour, even including all the equipment for the group. Is this normal?

My blood oxygen is below 50, unsure what to do  June 24, 2023

Recent trek turned nightmare, stopped breathing and rushed down to lower level where reading was 49%. I’m terrified and have no idea what to do. Currently trying to contact a medical helicopter.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

frontifthewagon

And you decided to post this on Reddit as it’s happening. Great coverage,  who’s your provider as I may need to switch.

phidauex

If you are conscious and typing you are going to be fine. If a meter is telling you 49% it is broken.

Zikyooc

If you can post on Reddit it’s a good sign. Blood oxygen level ain’t as important as other symptoms.

Headache? Ataxia? Throwing up? Short breathing even after resting?

What to do? Continue going down.

Wientje

Honestly, posting on Reddit doesn’t imply that his brain is getting enough oxygen. Most people can post fine without it.

ELI-PGY5

Could have HAPE. 49% is low, but we saw some very low sats during Covid with people still on their phones.

Kili is actually quite an easy place to get HAPE/HACE, altitude gain can be very rapid. Equally, it’s quite an easy place to get down from, not technical.

So OP: go down, keep, going down. Find a doctor. Check your SpO2 on a second oximeter when you can.

For those saying it’s a panic attack - no, look at the obs. Sure the low SpO2 might be wrong, but it would be silly to assume that. OP is hypoxic until proven otherwise, and HAPE or PE are the likely causes.

Update to my “blood oxygen is below 50” post.  June 25, 2023

Long-winded update for anyone who cares / my experience failing to summit Kilimanjaro.

As a bit of background, yesterday was the end of my adventures on Mt Kilimanjaro. Unfortunately on the summit attempt I ran into a brutal bout of altitude sickness, and came short of the summit with less than an hour of hiking left. Thankfully, I managed to get out without serious damage due to the incredible guides.

Like most hikers, I started for the summit from Barafu Camp (4,600m) at around midnight. From the get-go, I’m realising something’s not quite right with my fitness. I’m wheezing just from doing light walking at camp, and have a splitting headache and nausea that won’t go away. Anyway, we start the climb and around 5,200 I’m noticing I’m getting seriously winded, and my headache has evolved from uncomfortable to “why is there a tyre iron in my eye” painful.

I try to trudge though, but metres from Stella Point (5,700m) my body just shuts down, I’ve been gasping for air for the last half hour, but suddenly I just can’t fill my lungs at all. My legs turn to jelly beneath me, the headache turns blinding and I just collapse, desperate for air. My guide tries to help me up, but I’m a puddle at this point and just keep gasping at him for oxygen. I genuinely thought I was going to die, I couldn’t get a breath in.

We manage to find a tank from Stella Point, and it gives me a brief 5 minutes of relief that lets me regain my legs. My guide sprint/drags me down the mountain to a lower point. There we do the blood oxygen reading and it hits 49%. This same pulse oximeter has been giving me 85-90% consistently during the daily check-ins for the last week (apart from a 76% after an acclimatisation hike where we hit 4,600 before descending to below 4,000), so I tend to trust it and get intensely freaked out at the 49%.

My guide calls a medical chopper (which never ends up arriving) and I try to use a cell signal to find out information on what I can do as a means to stop the impacts of low blood ox (or at least calibrate my anxiety level appropriately). Being Tanzania’s 3G internet, none of the pages load on my phone, but reddit started up perfectly, so I decided to turn to this community for advice / emotional support. I of course got only detailed, compassionate responses, that reminded me that asking medical advice from strangers is a very sensible thing to do.

(No seriously, thank you to everyone to provided advice, it helped me get the help I needed once I got to the hospital).

Anyway, after waiting an hour for a chopper that never came, we ended up hiking for four hours to get to a road, and managed to get back to Moshi where my breathing returned to normal after a few hours. Still a bit crook, but no signs of permanent damage. So while there may have been a misread with my blood oxygen as a lot of people thought, I truly was in a bad state, and the oximeter my guide used was the one the same exact model the hospital used. I don’t know if I was truly below 50%, but I’ve never felt worse in my life.

So for anyone travelling to Kilimanjaro, enjoy a ewonderful experience, but as I learned, you can’t tough out altitude sickness, if you’re getting the signs, turn back before your body shuts down. Also, the two things you should never rely on in an emergency, emergency services in Tanzania and reddit.

TL;DR: Got slammed with altitude sickness on Kili, asked for help on reddit and was fairly mocked for using it as emergency help, but managed to get down safely.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

ELI-PGY5

Hey mate, MD guy here who posted on the last thread.

Glad to hear you pulled through OK.

Altitude sickness sucks, and Kili is a pretty easy place to get it because it’s like a giant ramp straight up to the sky.

Sorry that so many people here decided to mock you in the middle of a medical emergency, I thought a lot of the posts were unfortunate.

Cheers!

OOP

Cheers mate, I really appreciated your comment on the last post. When you’re sick in a foreign place, decent advice like yours feels fantastic.

phidauex

Thanks for the update, I was one of the slightly skeptical, but trying to be helpful posters.

I’m very glad you are back safe, that makes the trip a success no matter what anyone says.

Thanks for posting more about your situation, hard to put yourself out there but it will help others learn and that is why we are here.

Good luck to you and I hope this doesn’t keep you out of the mountains forever, there is a whole world to explore in your back yard and you can now do so from the position of someone who has been there and seen how tough and complex it can get.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP