Another tough climb: Dallas doctor wants to be 'fully engaged in life' after close call on Mount Everest
By Pete SloverThree months after Beck Weathers nearly froze to death in a Himalayan hurricane, he still finds himself transported back to that terrifyingly thin air atop Mount Everest.
"I climb that mountain every night. Without fail," the Dallas pathologist said late last week during an interview in his North Dallas living room. "I'll be fairly happy the first day that I go to sleep and I am not in that storm. "At some point that will occur," he said, with the deliberate optimism that is central to his mental recovery strategy.
On the physical side, Dr. Weathers, 49, is trying to bounce back from the near-total loss of his hands and severe facial disfigurement that he's lived with since his rescue in mid-May.
On the afternoon of May 10, Dr. Weathers was among about 150 climbers spread up and down Everest's 29,028-foot summit. When he was between the highest camp and top of the mountain, a ferocious storm blew in.
Eight climbers, including experienced guides, died - a record one-day loss on the world's highest mountain.
Dr. Weathers was left near death by fellow climbers who found him covered with snow and crusted with ice - and, they reasoned, beyond help.
But after a night in the bitter elements, he woke up and staggered, snow-blind, into the circle of tents, eventually to be led down the mountain for a heroic high-altitude helicopter rescue.
"You don't come any closer to dying than I did," Dr. Weathers said. "I think it's very difficult to understand just how horrendous and terrifying it can be. You're up that high; you're that cold. You haven't eaten in days because your body won't allow it; you're out of oxygen and confused.
"When the wind hits that hard, the tents collapse and feel like they're ripping off the ground. It's pitch black. You're still freezing in spite of the fact that you have all of your clothes on and you're in your sleeping bag."
Back home in Dallas, with his wife, Margaret - a Georgia native who goes by the nickname "Peach" - his 17-year-old son, Beck, and his 14-year-old daughter, Meg, Dr. Weathers has tried to sort out lessons from the climb.
He doesn't second-guess his decision to tackle the mountain, where he was part of an eight-member party that paid $65,000 each for the trip. Although hindsight offers some technical lessons about how the ascent could have been handled, Dr. Weathers said his analysis has been on a more profound level, with some surprising results for a man who describes himself as "not terribly spiritual."
Conclusion one: Miracles happen.
"There's kind of a Lazarus quality to what happened to me," Dr. Weathers said. "There's no logical reason why when you lose consciousness because you're basically freezing to death, you'll come back, you'll warm up.
"Climbers and people familiar with conditions are even more amazed that anybody could come back from, in essence, hypothermic coma."
He considered aloud an alternative explanation.
"You can certainly say it was blind luck. The lottery comes around and somebody's got to win it, and I'm the one. That's seems like not a very ennobling idea: to just be the winner of the lotto lying on the mountain.
"One has to wonder if not - for want of a better term - I was touched by the hand of God," he said. "I find that somewhat difficult because I'm not a terribly spiritual person. And if it that's true, then why me, as opposed to any of the other individuals who were there?"
Conclusion two: When a miracle does present itself, it's up to the individual to recognize it and seize the opportunity.
In his case, that meant digging deep for physical and emotional strength.
"Because your hands are dead, your face is frozen, you're lost and alone and nobody is coming to help you. You can't just sit there and go, `Oh, my goodness,' and roll over and give up," he said "I think each person has it, but most of the time they've never had to call on it. And I'd just as soon never have had to learn the lesson that it's there. But it is."
With a clinician's precision, Dr. Weathers described the efforts to heal the "horrendous physical damage" to his body.
"The vast majority of my time is spent in rehabilitation and being cut on," he said. "I had four operations in about five weeks and logged about 30 hours of being whittled on. I still have a number of operations to go."
The wind-bitten, blackened skin on his cheeks has sloughed off, leaving some scarring. The similarly damaged end of his nose is a work-in-progress. To rebuild it, a plastic surgeon gathered cartilage from Dr. Weathers' ears and placed it under the surface of his forehead, where there was a good blood supply and skin that could be stretched for use elsewhere.
About 10 days ago, the newly grown "nose" was cut loose and flipped down into position, where it still gets forehead blood via a curly-cue knob at its bridge. After the nose establishes its own blood supply, plans call for further procedures to fine-tune its shape.
Doctors amputated his right hand and fitted the forearm with a prosthesis that grips and turns in response to electrical impulses from remaining muscles.
"It's just like curling a 50-pound barbell every time you lift this beast," Dr. Weathers said. "The amount of actual real function you get out of this stuff, compared to real hands, is just pretty pitiful."
Dr. Weathers, who is left-handed, also lost the fingers and all but the base of his thumb on that side.
"I have essentially no function in the left hand," he said. "I can push with it and sort of feel hots and colds and all the things you would normally feel with a palm. And so what I've got really is really kind of a big palm."
Dr. Weathers aims to return to work as a pathologist at Medical City Dallas Hospital, diagnosing diseases by examining samples in petri dishes and on microscope slides. If necessary, he said, he'll do the work with the help of one or more literal hired hands.
"I definitely want to, because my intellect's intact," he said. "I want to be active, be productive and be back fully engaged in life.
"I love being outside. There are things that I can't do, but I'll find alternative ways to enjoy being outside," Dr. Weathers said. "I have every intention of going back to my little fitness regimen. I enjoy working out; I enjoy being fit, though I'm not going to be doing any technical climbing."
Having seen death face-to-face, Dr. Weathers said he enjoys a newfound appreciation for family and "the people activities, as opposed to the place activities."
The mental and physical healing are inseparable, he said. While he's grateful to be alive, Dr. Weathers mourns the loss of close friends and his own physical dexterity.
"In the short haul, you put up with the wounds. But there are days in there where you just wake up and say, `I can't believe it. I am never going to have hands again the rest of my life.' And that's fairly jolting."
He employed a metaphor suggestive of mountaineering: "The pit of despair and self-pity that is hanging around the edge of your existence and constantly inviting you to step on into it. It is always there."
Dr. Weathers said his immediate strategy is to focus elsewhere.
"You pick something each day. A positive. I try to not make it big things as much as little things. When you first get back, it may be that you have a bowl of ice cream, which if you never made it back you would have never had.
"Nowadays, it tends to be trying to figure out how to do one more chore I couldn't do before. At least, on the short haul, it gets easier because you do develop some skills. You can learn to use robo-arm to get your socks on, dress yourself and that kind of thing.
"In the long haul, I think you have to develop a sense of peace and equanimity about what's happened to you and be able to accept that and not always be thinking, `Gee, I wish . . . '
PHOTO(S): (The Dallas Morning News: Judy Walgren) Dr. Beck Weathers has had to adapt to new challenges since a blizzard on Mount Everest did severe damage to his hands and face. Surgery involving cartilage grafted from his ears is helping to repair his damaged nose
Copyright 1996 The Dallas Morning News Company
