Slept much better than I had on previous nights and woke up feeling like myself again.  Somehow I knew I was stronger today.  However, the slight swelling in my face had got worse overnight and I could feel my cheeks and lips being stretched to the extent that I was dribbling uncontrollably and my speech was blurred (and no alcohol in sight!).  I decided to get up slightly early and get moving around to boost my circulation and hopefully help reduce the swelling.  

As everyone else began to get up I could see from their shocked reactions that I must resemble the Elephant Man!  Steve made the most of it by joking about waking up, “next to that!” in the morning!  However, the lead guide was concerned and took my blood saturation level which I was pleased to discover was very good.  I explained that I felt much better than I had the previous day and that I’d slept well.  The down side to having slept so well was that I hadn’t got up and moved around in the night and this seemed to have affected the swelling of my face.   

I got up and had some breakfast – fruity loops are a real treat at altitude!  I was feeling so relieved that I was feeling ‘normal’ again and was actually looking forward to moving up to the final camp – particularly as I had carried the heaviest load the previous day.   But then everything changed.  The lead guide approached me and told me that I had to go down the mountain.  I tried to explain that I was feeling myself again today and that it was just the swelling of my face which looked worse than it felt, but he said that he was concerned it may spread to my brain and so I had to go down.  He was a very experienced guide and when someone tells you they think it could go to your brain, i.e. cerebral edema which is a major killer at altitude, you don’t argue.   

I experienced a crushing disappointment at having come so close to the summit and having completed all the toughest carries only to be turned around and sent back down.  The next major problem was what Stevie should do.  His initial reaction was to descend with me to make sure I was ok.    However, I wanted him to continue and have his chance at the summit and I pointed out that I felt strong again and it was just the swelling in my face that made it look worse than it probably was – I would be ok getting down and he could catch up with me within a few days.  We had spent months fundraising for this trip and a lot of people, including sponsors were looking for a summit.  We were concerned that no-one would care about the rest of the Patch Expedition, or understand why we had turned around and that they would consider it an indicator of future failures.  And on a personal level, I didn’t want to be the reason anyone else had to turn around.

After much discussion, we had made our decision that Stevie would continue and I would go down.  Then it all changed again!  The lead guide came back to us and told us that things had changed and that if I went down alone a guide would no longer accompany me and that I would have to pay for a porter to guide me down.   But that if two of us went down then a guide would come with us.  Well that was it, we had no choice.  A porter would have cost over $1500 which we simply did not have.  Stevie would have to descend as well.  Game over for both of us.

 And it was a long way back down to Base camp.  We couldn’t leave until 4pm as we had to wait for all our kit that we had carried the previous day to be brought back down from Camp 3.  We then had to carry all of our kit back down – so what we would normally take two days to carry had to be carried all at once.  Our packs were therefore ridiculously heavy.  I felt fine though and the walk down was tough but nowhere near as difficult as on previous days.  My face was still swollen but I felt strong physically.  The scree section was a challenge and due to the weight of his pack, when Stevie tripped over on a rogue rock, he just kept on going!  We thought for a minute he was going to take a swim in the river at the bottom but he came to a halt just in time!  It was then a pretty horrendous scramble for him to get back up with his huge pack.

 But we plodded on downwards with heavy hearts.  We felt so disappointed about having to turn around so close to the end of the trip.  And as we had time to reflect over the decision to send us down we became increasingly frustrated. We felt annoyed that our inexperience had meant we didn’t put forward our case to continue and we thought of other alternatives to coming down that would have made far more sense.  Also, the doctor at Base Camp cleared me to climb and said I was in very good health and that sometimes swelling in the face did occur and that it was not dangerous.  But it was too late to go back up as we were with a large commercial company and they would not accommodate it.  It was simply too late and something that we would have to learn to live with over the coming days, weeks and months.  And so we vowed to try not to let it bother us and enjoy the rest of the journey back down…..