Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [145]
Half an hour before the test swim, Dr. Block asked me to come with him so we could go through the stretcher drill. I told him I was sorry, but I just couldn’t do it. He thought about it for a moment, then apologized. He said he was just trying to go through a drill and make sure the crew knew what they were doing. He hadn’t considered how it would affect me. It disturbed me so much that I didn’t want to see the stretcher drill. I didn’t want to have that image in my mind. Martha Kaplan volunteered to be my body double. I retreated to the ship’s lounge—as far as I could get from the drill—and started drinking four eight-ounce mugs of hot water, to warm my body from the inside out. That way I could make myself into a human thermos. It would also counteract the possible dehydration caused by exposure to extreme cold.
We had anchored off Admiralty Harbor, near the Polish research station called Arctowski Base. The base was made up of seven small, bright yellow buildings, set on a rocky beach encircled by steep, curvaceous mountains covered with ice and snow. There were thick glaciers along the mountains’ peaks and deep within their recesses, set against a light blue sky filtered by moving clouds. The roof of one building had blown off in the same storm we’d experienced going through the Drake Passage. Studying the geography, I picked out places on land, ones I could use as reference points. I replayed the voices of friends and their encouraging words in my head. I had prepared as well as I could for this swim, down to the last details. I had grown my hair long to insulate my head; I had let the hair grow on my legs, which would make me less sensitive to the cold; I had even let my toenails grow to the edge of my toes to protect them from rocks at the end of the swim.
My friend Arthur Sulzberger, who has read more about Antarctic exploration than anyone I know, had suggested that I pay attention to my teeth. He pointed to the story of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the early explorers of Antarctica in the Scott expedition, whose teeth had shattered in weather sixty-six degrees below zero. While I knew I wouldn’t be in air that cold, I wondered if my teeth would conduct the cold through my body since I knew it could be conducted through the mouths of mammals. Studies done by Dr. John Heyning at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County had shown that humpback whales divert blood flow away from their tongues when they are feeding so that their core temperatures are not cooled down. I went to my dentist, Dr. William Poe, and asked him about my teeth. He explained that teeth are porous, and the more porous they are, the more likely they are to be sensitive to the cold. He said that Cherry-Garrard’s teeth might have been filled with tiny droplets of water; when he opened his mouth in the subzero weather, the water instantly froze, and the quick expansion of water into ice shattered his teeth. Dr. Poe gave me three fluoride treatments to fill in the pores in my teeth. He also removed three old silver fillings and replaced them with enamel crowns.
One other concern was protecting my eardrums. I was worried that intensely cold water would damage them and possibly cool down my brain temperature. Dr. Poe came up with a solution; he made formfitting earplugs out of dental-impression material to protect my eardrums.
While I sat in my cabin trying to stay calm and mentally preparing myself, Barry and Scott had been trying to lift Martha Kaplan on a stretcher up the gangway. She’d bravely lain there on the stretcher with her eyes closed while they’d tried numerous times to bring the stretcher up the gangway, once nearly dropping her overboard. They finally realized that the gangway was too steep to get her up that way. Barry and Dan then suggested that if necessary they put me in the Zodiac, get back to the ship, and use the ship’s crane to lift the Zodiac onto the deck. This was