All the details...and then some!

Okay, I’m ready to tell the story of my swim!  But before I do, I’d like to explain why it took me so long to feel “up to it.”  My recovery from this swim took longer than my recovery from Flathead Lake last year.  This appears to have been mostly due to a kidney issue.  Beginning Sunday (two days after my swim finish) I was having pretty bad stomach/lower back pain.  Once back to Kalispell on Tuesday my pain had escalated to the point that I took a trip to the ER and was diagnosed with acute renal failure due to dehydration.  Apparently I got dehydrated in the several days following the swim which negatively affected my kidneys.  So I have been home sick from work all week, stuck on the couch, watching Grey’s Anatomy and drinking as much liquid as possible.  I am feeling much better this afternoon.  I had my kidney function retested this morning, but have not been called with the results yet, but based on how I am feeling right now, I am guessing I’m on the road to recovery!

This will be a long post, because it was a long swim! 

On Wednesday the 31^st my boat crew and I left Jetski’s Ahoy at 9:00 am towards Stehekin.  My initial crew was Cassie(my friend-a YMCA swimmer), Krissy (my sister), Hannah (my niece) and Brian (KK’s dad).  We had anticipated a 3 hour drive to the top of the lake, but we hit quite a bit of rough weather which not only slowed us down, but used more gas than we had anticipated.  We were about 10 miles from Stehekin when our pontoon boat ran out of gas and we had to wait for the Forest Service to come and rescue us!  We finally got up to Stehekin at about 3:30.   I was ansty and unhappy that we were so far off schedule.  I am still working on being better able to handle unexpected issues that arise in situations like these. 

By the time I got started it was 4:00 pm (4 hours behind schedule).  Immediately upon getting in the water I knew it was MUCH colder than I had been told.  I was expecting between 60 and 65 degree water, upon entry into the frigid waves of Lake Chelan I am convinced it was no warmer than 55 degrees.  I was worried, when 2 hours in, I was still feeling cold.  Although my training had included swims in cold lakes like Glacier National Park’s Lake McDonald, I was unprepared for the cold of Lake Chelan.  Maybe it was the cooler air temperature, or the wind but I was just plain cold (and that feeling didn’t go away the entire swim).

Somewhere between 6 and 7 pm the night shift was transferred out (being that we were 4 hours behind, this meant that my dad, who was driving the transfer boat, had to travel much further up the lake than we had planned).  The night shift was Katie (my co-worker), Amanda (my sister) and Elliot (my cousin).  Darkness came very quickly after that and I had a lot of anxiety about swimming in the dark with the waves I had been experiencing.  Around 8 pm I decided that I needed more warmth-I was having trouble keeping my fingers together on my arm pulls because my hands were so cold.  I put on my neoprene shirt over my wetsuit (and that stayed on for the rest of the swim).  It was very difficult to put this tight, thick shirt on while in the water, but it wasn’t impossible.

Feeling much warmer, the next issue I tackled was an increasing sense of my stomach feeling “sloshy.”  I’ve never gotten nauseas while swimming and I had tried all of my nutritional choices in training.  So I’m not sure if it was the rough 6 hour boat ride up to Stehekin, my anxiety over the late start, or the amount I’d been pushed around by the waves thus far…or maybe it was a combination of all three.  But the next thing I knew I was vomiting, 3 times.  I knew that stomach issues could be the end of an effort like this but as soon as I threw up, I immediately felt a million times better!  So with the help of my crew we cut down my nutrition intake for a few hours until my stomach was back on track and that was the last issue I had with nausea.

Once I calmed down I was able to take in some of the beauty of the night.  The part of the lake that we were at that time did not have houses on the shore.  There were no lights, except the lights from our boat, and because of that, the stars were shinning brighter than I had ever seen before.  There were still a good amount of waves, but they were all moving with me and although I had the occasional mouth full of water from an unseen wave taking me over-I had felt like I was getting better at reading the lake.

Near 3 or 4 in the morning my Dad finally returned to the Pontoon boat with the speedboat (he had left us at 7 and we had called shore and found out he had left Manson at 9 for the return trip to the pontoon boat).  We were all worried about how long it took him to return, but he had a rough drive to us with the waves.  I hit those same rougher waves right before sunlight and I was screaming at the lake.  I still can’t believe how hard the first 14 hours of the swim were and I still can’t believe I made it through that period of the swim.

Once the sun came up I was in MUCH better spirits.  I knew I had a long day ahead of me, but I was holding a great pace (mostly due to the waves at my back).  I was able to joke with my boat crew on breaks.  It was somewhere around 8 or 9 in the morning when the night crew was replaced by the second day crew.  This crew consisted of Krissy, Hannah and Cassie again, but also Jason (my brother in law) and Robin (a new friend who volunteered to help after reading one of the newspaper articles on the swim).

A few interesting things in regards to my pace around this point- 1) at the halfway point I was on track to be done within 28 hours (as predicted), 2) at the 30 mile mark-the distance of Flathead Lake, I was 2 hours faster than my Flathead Lake time.

Most of the day we had wonderful conditions and by midday we had even lost the wind at my back and the lake was flat as glass.  During this time period we got closer to where the water was supposed to get warmer, and don’t get me wrong, there were occasional drifts of warm water, but it never, ever felt like it got warmer to me.  I was freezing, the whole time.   Mid afternoon was when my pals began to hop in and swim with me.  Cassie and Robin were first.  Then my niece Hannah (who is 12) got in and swam with me for 2 hours! And she was able to keep up without fins!  She’s gonna be a superstar swimmer! : )  These little fishie helpers were SO great at lifting my spirits.

The other thing that greatly lifted my spirits was that my dad transferred out Katelyn and Jaime!  They stayed on the boat for a while.  KK was making everyone on the boat laugh.  She was doing my sister’s hair, trying on swim caps and waving at me while I swam.  It was wonderful to have her there.

Even with all these wonderful supporters, my mood soon went down and fast.  The weather turned in what felt like an instant.  The wind and waves were hitting us head on and I was SO tired.  This led to my first big crying breakdown.  I was trying so hard, but was making very little forward progress.  It took hours to get around one of the final bends in the lake.  For a swim that was so on track hours earlier, this change in the weather changed everything and pushed my swim into a second night battling the cold, the waves and severe exhaustion.

There were some transfers of boat crew, the kids all went in before dark and I honestly didn’t know who all was on the boat once the darkness had come again.  Around midnight I was so severely cold I was worried that I was hypothermic or in shock.  I begged my crew for something warm to drink.  They were able to flag down another boat for some hot water, which they brought us a whole bucket of.  I would love to know who these people were to thank them, because I was able to have tomato soup, it was the best tasting tomato soup I have ever had.  All my liquids from that point were made with the hot water and it seemed to jumpstart my system a bit.

Another jumpstart came when my dad brought out one last crew member a little past midnight- Bob Ford.  Bob was the director of Sport Clubs when I was at Central Washington University.  He is still at CWU and coaches rugby.  He hopped in the water with me and swam in front of me, yelling encouragement at me for hours.  It was incredible and it kept me going.

But then, close to 3:30 am with about 4 miles to my desired ending point, I started seeing things.  I thought I could see the shore, well more specifically, I thought I could see trees and plants and people on shore.  I was hallucinating.  Everything was catching up to me.  The cold.  The exhaustion.  The 36 hours I had been in the water.  I began arguing with my boat crew and crying.  I wanted to be done so bad.  I told my crew that I didn’t believe I had four miles left because I could see the shore.  I described the plants and the trees I could see and I was told that those things were not really there.  That I was seeing things and that it was time to get on the boat.  I refused.  Even then, on the brink of complete and utter exhaustion, I offered a compromise in order to get my way.  I asked to be directed to a different finish spot, the closest course to shore.  I was a half mile out from the shore our current course was running parallel to, so we changed course and I swam straight to shore.

My crew called the people on shore and directed them to change locations (which was good as the park had closed and locked the gates).  The cars of my family and friends on shore began to line my impromptu finish spot.  Even as I swam towards shore, I was still seeing vivid hallucinations.  I was seeing that I was swimming under a bridge (there was no bridge) and there were elaborate stone wall carvings on each side of me (not there either, but puts a new meaning to “hitting the wall”).  Once I got myself up to the rocks of the shore (which was well within the Chelan City limits) at 3:51 am, I immediately told my supporters that I was seeing things and I should probably be checked out.  My cousin Sarah is a nurse and she checked my vitals-which were fine.  I was in the water for 36 hours and awake for 46 hours straight. 

I was then carted off to the Condo, I showered and fell asleep with a half of a hamburger still in my hand.  : )

I only slept for around 2 hours then I was up, in pain and searching for food and ice!  I had a rash of visitors that morning, including the Roker family.  My parents and I headed back to Ellensburg after stopping and visiting with Mountain View Lodge and Jetski’s Ahoy to thank them again for their sponsorship of the swim.   The excitement and activity of the day is likely what caused me to become dehydrated, which led to my kidney issues, but again, I am feeling much better now!

A big, enormous thank you to all of you who have supported me in this goal of mine.  Particularly the members of the von Jentzen, Davis, Ernst, Benjamin and Roker families.  I know you were all on the edge of your seats waiting for my brother Paul’s next update!  To my boat crew-this could not have been done without you.  To my sponsors, thank you for supporting this event.  To the people of Chelan, Manson and Stehekin-thank you for cheering me on during my swim- and yes, I will come back at some point in a few months and speak about my swim.  And thank you, thank you so much, to all of you who have donated money to help out little Katelyn.

KK and her mother returned to New York on Sunday for her next round of treatment.  On the first day of treatment this week KK was weighed and measured and she had grown 1 ½ inches and gained one pound.  Her mom texted this to me and told me that KK wanted me to know that she was growing up to be as strong as me.  That made me cry.  That sweet little girl is already probably 10 times stronger than me, but I love that she will look up to me in that way.  KK had a birthday this week and turned 6 years old!

I would still encourage each of you reading to share this story, both of the swim and of KK’s battle with as many people as you can.  Right now donations collected are right around $5,000-which is about ½ way to the goal I had made in terms of fundraising.  Please continue to help me in raising as much as possible for this family.

I take great pride in this accomplishment, but swimming Lake Chelan was definitely a humbling experience.  Flathead Lake was cake by comparison.  Lake Chelan threw everything possible at me, and I had to work for every inch I gained. I made it, but there was not one point, not until I actually touched the rock on shore that I knew I was going to finish that swim.  I learned a lot about myself during this swim, but I also learned a lot about how the support and encouragement of people can drive an individual to complete a task that most would describe as impossible.  And it has once again been reinforced that a tiny little girl can inspire me to do things that many people thought I was not capable of doing.    

~Em