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Incredible
but true Aron Ralston
wants to have a margarita, if the doctors say it's OK. Odds are,
if he could muster the courage to hack off his own arm with a souped-up
pocketknife after being pinned by an 800-pound boulder in the remote
Utah desert in America he can probably have a margarita. Only a week
after he crawled through a narrow, winding canyon, rappelled down
a 60-foot cliff and walked six miles in search of rescuers with
the stump of his right arm wrapped in a makeshift tourniquet - Ralston
sat down at a hospital near Denver to tell the world how he did
it. Yes, of course,
the pain of sawing off his arm was terrible, said Ralston, 27, a
mechanical engineer-turned-adventurer. "I'm not sure how I
handled it. I felt pain. I coped with it. I moved on. ... I did
what I had to do." Trapped on
April 26 in Blue John Canyon in Canyon Lands National Park when
the boulder shifted as he was lowering himself off it, Ralston tried
everything he could think of to save himself. "I began
laying plans ... and the next five days until I was rescued ...
I spent going through each option," he told reporters at St.
Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction. He threw himself
against the boulder, over and over, to shift it. He used the
rope and pulleys in his climbing gear to rig a hoist to lift it.
He used a "multiuse
tool" - similar to a pocketknife, but with multiple blades
for different tasks - to try to carve the rock away where it was
pinning his arm, just below the wrist. He felt depressed
and remorseful at times, but he was largely able to stave off desperation
by focusing on finding a way to free himself. He said he
had mystical experiences - sensing "presences" in the
canyon that he believed were his family and friends giving him strength.
Finally, by April 29, his third day in the canyon, his food and
water - a litre of water, two burritos and crumbs on a couple of
candy wrappers - were running low. Ralston concluded that he would
have to cut off his arm if he were to survive. By then, he said,
"the courage became more about pragmatics." Before beginning,
Ralston prepared a tourniquet, pulled some bicycling shorts out
of his backpack to put on the wound and packed his other belongings
so he could quickly leave after he was done. "Essentially,
I got my surgical table ready," he said. But his initial
attempt to sever the limb was sobering. He was using the same knife
with which he'd tried to carve away the boulder, a folding device
that typically has knife blades, pliers, screwdrivers and other
gadgets. It was "what
you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multiuse
tool," he said. It was so dull by then that "I couldn't
even cut the hair off my arm." The next day,
after finishing the last sips of his water, he tried again. This
time, he was able to puncture the skin, but he found he couldn't
cut the bone beneath. By Thursday
morning, he concluded that he had only one more chance. "I realised
that it was the last opportunity that I could have and still have
the physical strength to get out where help would find me,"
he said. This time,
he twisted his arm, torqueing the bones until they broke. "I was
able to first snap the radius and then, within another few minutes,
snap the ulna at the wrist, and from there, I had the knife out
and applied the tourniquet and went to the task," he said. "It was
a process that took about an hour." Blue John Canyon
is as remote as it gets in Canyon Lands National Park, and he had
many miles to navigate, bleeding and dehydrated, before he could
hope to find help. With the stump
of his arm wrapped in the makeshift tourniquet, Ralston still faced
a 150-foot crawl through a rock-clogged fissure. Then, one-handed,
he had to rappel down a sheer face of rock. Then came a hike of
about six miles. Only then did he run into the Dutch tourist family
who went for help. Incredibly,
Ralston's harrowing escape won't turn him into an couch potato,
he will resume his outdoors lifestyle as soon as he recovered and
was fitted with a prosthesis. Losing part
of his arm is "obviously a change and a huge challenge for
him to make an adjustment in his life," his father Larry Ralston
said. "The thing that won't change about Aron is that he charts
his own course, he sets his goals, and he lives every day fully.
"Right now, he's convinced he's going to get back in the outdoors." Experts always
advise hikers not to go alone into remote areas, to always leave
a copy of an itinerary and to let people know when they expect to
return. Ralston did
none of those things, he admitted. He said he would do it right
from now on, and fervently urged other adventurers to do so, too. "I may never fully understand the spiritual aspects of what I experienced, but I will try," he said. "The source of the power I felt was the thoughts and prayers of many people, most of whom I will never know." Stop
that sweat The degree
of perspiration control provided by different products may vary
from 20 to over 40%. A product must reduce perspiration by at least
20 to 25% to be considered a true antiperspirant. Creams and roll-ons
generally give greater protection than aerosol products. Most antiperspirant
preparations have deodorant properties, which may account for the
public acceptance of the less effective antiperspirants. The choice
of one type over another is largely a matter of personal preference
for the "feel", ease of application, antiperspirant power,
and odour control. For a time, aerosol products were by far the
most popular forms, although they are generally less effective.
However, concerns over the effects of aerosols on the environment
and federal regulatory actions have changed consumer preferences.
Today roll-ons and sticks are more popular than aerosols. |
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