Everest Base Camp
Tuesday, October 16, 2007 7:54 AM
We are back in ABC and our computer is still working! Amazing! So,update:
On Oct. 11 we started our climb from ABC (18,300 ft) to Camp 1 (20,600ft). We left at 9:00 and arrived in camp at 3:00. Nima also carried to camp 2.
On Oct. 12 we took 4 hours to climb to Camp 2 (22,080 ft). Nima carried to camp 3. Lakpa took a walk to view the south side of Shishapangma where he and Dave Morton were 2 years ago. I sat in the tent...
On Oct. 13 we climbed to our camp 3 (22,800 ft). We set up camp before the fixed lines would start. Since no one else had summited Shishapangma yet this season, there were no fixed lines. It took me 3 hours to get into camp. After two days of climbing I was really beginning to get tired. Once we get there and the tents were set up, Lakpa and Nima headed back up to start fixing lines for the next day's ascent. They gave me a job... I set the sleeping bags out to dry... really tough job...
On Oct. 14 WE SUMMITTED!!! We started at 3:30 a.m. in the dark and in our down suits. It was about -30 degrees. When the sun came out it quickly warmed up and I took my down suit off. Instead of climbing up the ridge to the right towards the "central summit", we traversed the snow face below the main summit before climbing up where we summited the main summit (the true summit) at 1:00 p.m. It was very windy and cold on the summit, which was just a snow blown ridge, and I was basically hanging off the side of it to take the summit photo. On the way down the wind had picked up and shadow covered much of the way. By the time we reached camp at 4:00 we were so exhausted that we collapsed in our tent, Lakpa fell asleep immediately and I continued to shiver uncontrollably for the next hour. It was quite a struggle but an absolutely beautiful day.
The next day, after the 4th night of feeling like we were being strangled by our sleeping bags (I got about 2 or 3 hours of sleep each night), we headed back to ABC. I was definitely more exhausted then on summit day. We'd been climbing for 4 days and my body was completely worn out. Miraculously I made it back to camp and collapsed in my tent for the next few hours.
Today was a rest day and tomorrow we walk down to CBC where we start our drive to Kathmandu. I am really looking forward to a shower and a warm bed. After that, it's home sweet home.
Thanks all for checking in. Take care!
- Danielle Fisher
This is Danielle checking in from ABC on Shishapangma.
October 2007
This is Danielle checking in from ABC on Shishapangma. We have been here for three days, but have just figured out our computer problems and can finally send cybercasts, at least for the time being.
We arrived in CBC on Oct. 6 after driving 4 hours on a very bumpy road. I swear the driver was trying to make the ride as rough as possible as he kept swerving sharply off the road to drive over the only bump in sight.
We spent two nights in CBC while we waited for our yaks to arrive to carry our things to ABC. Lakpa almost lost his sunglasses before the attempted thief was forced to return them saying, innocently, "I found them in the tent!"
On Oct. 8, at 10:00 we and our yaks began our 12 mile hike up the valley to ABC at roughly 18,300 ft. On the way, I ran into an old friend, Nick Rice, whom I met climbing Gasherbrum 2 last year in Pakistan. He was leaving Shisha as I was a arriving and it was a nice surprise seeing him. Lakpa and I cheated on the last part of the hike when we rode Tibetan horses a little less than half the way. My horse was so small that I thought I was going to break it in half as it trotted up the valley.
Yesterday, Oct. 9, Lakpa and Nima carried to camp 1 while I stayed behind with our base camp helper, Chuldim, who speaks only a few words of English, although he's fluent in Sherpa, Hindi, Nepali, and Chinese, as well as his native Tibetan. He makes me feel quite the amateur, not knowing any foreign languages. I washed some clothes yesterday (which was good since I had just run out of clean underwear), and I continued reading the first book I have
read since I left Seattle on Aug. 26: "Three Cups of Tea". It's a good book and is bringing back memories of my time in Pakistan last year. We had a visitor once Lakpa and Nima returned: Blair, whom I met on Everest in 2005. It was fun reminiscing and hearing stories of the climbs he's been on since 2005.
It's getting colder and colder here as it gets later and later in the season. Last night it was 20 degrees F. in my tent when I jumped into my sleeping bag around 8:00. I'm beginning to dream of sitting in front of the fire at home which my family starts lighting about this time every year.
The climb is still clearly on my mind, however, as I look forward to starting our ascent of Shishapangma tomorrow morning. It's going to be a long day, and an even longer 5+ days as we make our way to the summit. We may not be able to do another cybercast until we get back into base camp and depending on the weather, we may have to come back to base camp and try our summit attempt another day, so keep checking in and I will update whenever possible.
- Danielle
Associated Press
June 3, 2005, 10:05 PM EDT (printed below)
"Twenty-year-old becomes youngest to climb Seven Summits"
By MELANTHIA MITCHELL
Associated Press Writer
SEATTLE -- Danielle Fisher has been climbing mountains for nearly a
quarter of her lifetime. Of course at 20, that's only been about five
years.
The shy, soft-spoken young woman hardly comes across as a person you'd
find scaling some of the world's highest mountains _ as a teen she
rarely did anything to break a sweat. But growing up in the Skagit
County town of Bow, about 70 miles north of here, she made many trips
with her parents to explore the nearby Cascade Mountains.
Now she has become the youngest person to climb the highest peaks on
each of the seven continents, a feat accomplished when she reached the
29,035-foot summit of Mount Everest on Wednesday.
The previous record holder, Britton Keeshan of Connecticut, completed
the Seven Summits last year at age 22. Keeshan is a grandson of the late
Bob Keeshan, TV's "Captain Kangaroo." Britton Keeshan had bested a
Japanese man who was 23 years and nine days old when he accomplished the
feat in 2002.
Compared to the average mountaineer, Fisher's petite 5-foot-7, 130-pound
frame is deceiving. Initially her fellow climbers considered her too
weak to conquer a mountain, but she always persevered.
"She's very strong in the mountains," said Gordon Janow, director of
programs for Alpine Ascents in Seattle, which led the expeditions on her
last four climbs in the Seven Summits circuit.
It's also her steadfastness that Janow says separates her from others
who do multiple climbs _ that and her age; most of the climbers are in
their 30s, 40s and 50s. Other young climbers are more likely to get
distracted with school or a new career.
Fisher, a student at Washington State University, delayed her studies to
complete the circuit but is registered to return in the fall.
"A lot of people start with this dream that they want to climb the seven
summits, and they do maybe one or two," Janow said.
With the Cascades as her training ground, Fisher has developed amazing
physical abilities that enable her to complete an 8,000-foot summit in a
day without problems, which is unusual, says Todd Burleson, president of
Alpine Ascents. In nearly 30 years of climbing, he said she's likely the
strongest female climber he's climbed with outside of world-class
professionals.
He was with her when she reached the summit of Mount Elbrus on the
Russia-Georgia border on July 30, 2003, and recalled her enthusiasm upon
returning to base camp and her drive to turn around and make the trek
again.
"Her motivation to climb is just so overpowering," he said. "Sometimes I
think the mountains are a calling that are very hard to define. You just
see them, feel them and you just want to climb them. I think that's her
case."
Her focus when climbing is another strength _ one that belies the
attention deficit disorder with which she was diagnosed in the sixth
grade.
"You have to find a balance between knowing that you need help and
making an effort to push through yourself," she wrote on her Web site.
"I realize that medication helps me. It certainly makes it easier to
focus, but I also have to make the personal effort to make my dreams
possible."
Fisher hasn't always been so enthusiastic about climbing, especially
when at age 15 her father, Jerome Fisher, took her to climb Mount Baker
in northwest Washington. "We climbed two peaks in one day. ... I hated
it!" wrote Fisher, who on Friday was in Camp 2 at 21,000 feet on Everest
and unavailable for an interview with The Associated Press. Her father
declined to be quoted for this story, but said she could be home within
the week.
Despite a bumpy beginning, Fisher continued to climb with her father,
and eventually, she was hooked.
"It wasn't until I climbed Mount Rainier that I really started to love
climbing. Now, every time I go climbing, I love it more," she writes.
She continued with climbs in the Tetons and South America. After scaling
Mount Aconcagua in Argentina on Jan. 5, 2003, she began focusing on the
Seven Summits circuit.
During the next two years, she also reached the tops of Mount
Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Elbrus, Mount Kosciusko in Australia,
Mount McKinley in Alaska and Mount Vinson Massif in Antarctica.
The Alpine Ascents' tab for climbing four of the summits _ Everest,
Kilimanjaro, Elbrus and Vinson Massif _ was roughly $96,000, with
Everest the most expensive at $65,000, Janow said.
Although she's broken Keeshan's record, Fisher's intrinsic love of
climbing is likely to keep drawing her back to the sport.
"She's the type of woman that's going to go on and climb many, many more
mountains," Burleson said. "This isn't the end of her climbing career. I
think it's just the start of it."
_
Copyright (c) 2005, The Associated Press
U.S. woman, 20, youngest to climb top seven summits
SEATTLE (AP) —
A 20-year-old woman has reached the summit of Mount Everest, making her the youngest person to scale the highest peaks on each of the seven continents.
Danielle Fisher, of Bow, Wash., called her parents late Wednesday night to say she had reached the 29,035-foot summit and returned to a lower base camp.
"She's a pretty excited young lady. She probably could have floated off of Camp Four," her father, Jerome Fisher, told The Bellingham Herald.
Danielle Fisher has been climbing since her father introduced her to the sport at age 15.
According to her Web site, she started her circuit Jan. 5, 2003, when she scaled Mount Aconcagua in Argentina. During the next two years, she also reached the tops of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Elbrus on the Russia-Georgia border, Mount Kosciusko in Australia, Mount McKinley in Alaska and Mount Vinson Massif in Antarctica.
The previous record holder, Britton Keeshan of Connecticut, completed the Seven Summits last year at age 22. Keeshan is a grandson of the late Bob Keeshan, TV's "Captain Kangaroo." He had bested a Japanese man who was 23 years and nine months old when he accomplished the feat in 2002.
Fisher arrived in Katmandu, Nepal, on March 28 and maintained contact with her family through e-mail and satellite phone. Her father said she succeeded despite bronchitis at the start of the trip, followed by food poisoning and harsh weather. Fisher managed to avoid an avalanche May 5, her father said.
Fisher takes medication for attention deficit disorder and mountain climbing helps her stay focused, her parents said.
"She's happiest when she's on the mountain," said her mother, Karen. "I'm just proud that she could see this through. It's been something she wanted to do for a long time."
Everest 2005: Danielle, 20, wants to be
youngest 7 summiter
Feb. 3, 2005
with permission from explorersweb.com.
Another summit claimed
Feb. 10, 2005
with permission from the Skagit Valley Herald
Focus, official newsletter of the Attention
Deficit Disorder Association
Fall 2004 (printed below)
with permission from ADDA
Peak Experience: Dani Fisher Conquers Mountains and AD/HD Limitations
by Ray Pelosi
Danielle Fisher’s voice sounds small, shy and hesitant over the phone. Like her 5-ft. seven-in., 130-lb. frame, it’s not at all imposing. But while she may be unassuming in stature, 19-year-old Dani has a big, bold achievement to her credit, and someday soon, she may be a world record-holder.
Already a veteran mountain-climber, Dani plans to scale Vinson Massif, in Antarctica, in January, 2005. Then in March she plans to scale the granddaddy of all mountain peaks, the 29,035-ft. Mount Everest in Nepal. If she succeeds, she’ll become the youngest person in history to ascend to the top of the Seven Summits – the tallest mountain on each of the world’s seven continents.
But there’s another mountain Dani’s conquered, and in its own way it’s been no less monumental and daunting. Dani was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in sixth grade. Before that she was struggling in school. She didn’t speak up in class and was habitually late with her homework. “I wasn’t doing well,” she recalls. “I was smart. I did fine on all my tests, but I had a hard time doing my schoolwork and in class I got distracted easily and couldn’t pay attention.”
That’s not an option in high-altitude climbing. The homework required to pass those tests can involve life and death, not A’s, B’s and C’s. Dani has been able to build the single-minded concentration needed to meet those challenges on the mountains and to prepare herself better for living with AD/HD elsewhere. “I’m able to focus on the mountain more than I’ve been able to do anywhere else. One of the main reasons for that is that you’re in a routine. Down here you have things that interfere all the time.”
Mike Woodmansee, her climbing partner and mentor, puts it in perspective. “The mountain is a dangerous place. But you’re surrounded by people who are focused on getting to the top. So things are all business,” he explains. “You have to pay close attention to a very basic set of things. There’s the quick regimentation just around the equipment, setting up camp and getting water by melting snow. Then there is conscious attention to the pace you’re maintaining relative to your climbing partner. You just have to do things in an ordered way.”
Dani finds the focus and mental toughness necessary to accomplish her impressive feats to be excellent training for coping with the vexations and confusions of AD/HD in daily life. “It’s hard for me to follow directions and get things done, like chores. Even if I want to do them, it’s tough to actually follow through.” But when climbing, Dani approaches her tasks in a more regimented way, says Woodmansee.
Like many people with AD/HD, Dani’s treatment is multi-disciplinary, including medication and counseling therapy. It presents a balance similar to the one Dani herself strikes in her attitude towards AD/HD. “I realize that medication helps me. It certainly makes it easier to focus, but I also have to make the personal effort to make my dreams come true.”
Right now, that big dream is to complete her challenge of the Seven Summits. Each ascent brings Dani closer to making something else come true – living successfully with AD/HD. “Since I started climbing, the person I am on the mountain has increasingly become the person I am in life,” she proclaims. “The more I spend time on the mountain, the more that shapes my life and helps me focus down here.”
Young woman takes on peaks, deficit disorder
October 28, 2004 (printed below)
with permission by the Bellingham Herald.
Young woman takes on peaks, deficit disorder
by Dean Kahn
Staff
Danielle Fisher is climbing mountains every day, even when she's not climbing mountains.
The 19-year-old from Bow has climbed five of the "Seven Summits," the tallest mountain on each continent. If she climbs the last two as planned, she'll become the youngest person to do so.
On top of that, she's trying to raise $100,000 to offset expenses, all while coping with attention deficit disorder.
"It's not like she's cured, or because she's got these big goals that she can function like you or I would," said Mike Woodmansee, a family friend and Fisher's mountaineering mentor. "She has come a long ways, but she still has to work at it every day."
Danielle grew up in Skagit County. Her father, Jerome, oversees a contracting company. Her mother, Karen, counsels middle-school students.
Danielle was diagnosed with ADD when she was in sixth grade. She was doing poorly in school because she was easily distracted. She began taking medication, and still does.
Growing up, Danielle was the musical girl in the family. Her older sister, Bobbi, was the athlete, like their dad. But to her father's surprise, Danielle tried out for cross-country her freshman year at high school. She didn't do well, but agreed to go climbing with him that summer. They climbed Mount Adams and Mount Baker, but Danielle really didn't enjoy it until they climbed Mount Rainier.
"For a 15-year-old, she did phenomenal," her father said. "I was surprised that she did better the higher she got on the mountain."
Danielle was hooked. She kept climbing and took mountaineering classes. Then, during holiday break last year, she and her dad climbed the tallest peak in South America.
"Aconcagua was a big leap for her," her father said. "That was the indicator that she could handle the rigors of an extended climb, and also the altitude."
At 5 feet 7 inches and 130 pounds, Danielle doesn't look like a fearless climber who could top continent after continent. It helps that she functions well at high altitude.
"It's her makeup," Woodmansee said. "You get up to 15,000 or 16,000 feet, everybody's going the same pace, and Danielle's right there."
It was after Aconcagua that Danielle locked on to the idea of becoming the youngest person to climb the Seven Summits. The record is held by a 23-year-old man. The youngest woman to climb all seven is 35.
Danielle kicked into high gear. In July 2003, she climbed Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro and Russia's Mount Elbrus. She climbed Australia's Kosciuszko last winter and Alaska's Denali in May.
Next up: Antarctica's Vinson Massif in January, and Mount Everest in May.
Danielle takes her ADD medication while she climbs. It's too dangerous not to.
"The risks are enormous," Woodmansee said. "It might mean not hanging onto your ice ax hard enough...It might mean not going into an ice ax arrest fast enough...It might mean knocking a rock off."
Despite the dangers, Danielle says climbing mountains is, in some ways, less of a challenge than daily life.
"When I'm climbing, I have to be a focused and organized person," she said. "There's one thing: Get to the top and back safely.
"Down on earth, things change. There's a million distractions."
Danielle has taken a year off from Washington State University to face a related challenge - raising money to repay her father's loan for her last two climbs. It's a whole new world for her - she's taken a class on public speaking, and is learning how to sell T-shirts, talk to community groups and solicit donations.
"That's where a lot of growth is occurring," Woodmansee said. "Those are things that most 19-year-olds aren't good at."
Danielle, soft-spoken but more articulate than she admits, recognizes the need to go public with her campaign, and isn't shy about discussing her experience with attention deficit disorder.
"I feel I can be a role model," she said. "ADD doesn't hold people back."
Two to go
September 9, 2004
with permission from the Skagit Valley Herald.
Success!
July 1, 2004
with permission from the Skagit Valley Herald.
Denali: It will be the fourth of the seven summits
for Fisher.
May 13, 2004
with permission from the Skagit Valley Herald.
Scaling Aconcagua
January 2, 2003
with permission from the Skagit Valley Herald.
Cold feet, yes. But a quitter? Not likely;
January 28, 2003 (printed below)
with permission by the Bellingham Herald.
Father-daughter duo scale Andes peak to aid Lynden man
Linda Shindruk
Special to The Bellingham Herald
BY LINDA SHINDRUK
FOR THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
Danielle Fisher literally climbed the highest mountain to help fight the disease that afflicts her good friend.
The 18-year-old senior at Burlington-Edison High School arrived home two weeks ago, after reaching the summit of Acon-cagua, the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere. The 22,831-foot extinct volcano is located in west central Argentina.
She climbed the mountain in an attempt to increase awareness and raise research funds for people afflicted with mastocytosis. In its worst form, the rare disorder causes its victims to suffer frequent and severe allergy symptoms.
Fisher's friend, Tony Goode of Lynden, suffers almost constant anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergy symptom in which the air passages narrow and blood pressure drops dramatically. Medications keep his symptoms in check much of the time, but since moving to Lynden in 1989, he's had to call Whatcom County fire district first responders to his home close to 300 times. The former fisher and active outdoorsman is now almost constantly housebound by the disease.
Climbing with Dad
Fisher started climbing mountains with her dad, Jerome, when she was 15. They've reached the summit of several Washington peaks, but Aconcagua was the farthest they've traveled and the highest they've climbed.
The duo teamed up with family friend Ken Christianson and his son, Jeff, for this climb. They left Vancouver, B.C., on Dec. 21, and flew to Mendoza, Argentina, via Los Angeles, Lima, Peru, and Santiago, Chile. After a night's stay at Los Penitentes, a ski resort in the Andes, the group walked the 25-mile, three-day trek to base camp. A local outfitter provided mules and mule attendants to carry their gear.
Base camp, at 13,800 feet, is called Plaza Argentina. It's where the mules and their attendants turn back. The climbers spent the nights there while they took two days carrying their gear up, this time on their own backs, to Camp 1.
Danielle carried 35 pounds, Jerome carried 50.
"We slept at base camp the night between carrying our gear up so that we could acclimate ourselves to the higher altitude and avoid altitude sickness," Danielle explained.
She added that Camp 1, at 16,400 feet, was "the highest I've ever climbed. It was really cool."
The team chose to climb the mountain via the "False Polish Glacier Route," in which they traversed across the north face of the mountain, under the glacier, Jerome said. The route meets up with what's referred to as the "Normal Route" at 20,500 feet to climb the northwest ridge to the summit. The terrain for much of the climb was loose rock over snow and ice, but the group often hiked through areas where they were surrounded by penitentes - pinnacles of ice sometimes as high as seven feet, caused by uneven melting of the glacier.
Higher and harder
After a rest day at Camp 1, the team repeated the two-day gear-carrying process up to Camp 2 at 19,200 feet. It was there that Danielle said she really started to notice the effects of the altitude.
"You're acclimatized, so you don't feel sick, but I remember everything was really hard to do up there," she said. "Breathing wasn't hard, but you don't get as much oxygen so you just feel tired all the time."
The weather was clear at Camp 2, but cold, with temperatures of 0 degrees at night.
"Your breath freezes on the inside of the tent, so if you hit the tent, cold water splashes down on you," Danielle said.
The team planned to go for the summit after one day of rest at Camp 2. When they woke up at 4 a.m. on summit day, however, they looked up and saw what they thought was a lenticular cloud at the top.
"A lenticular cloud looks like a little cap on top of the mountain, and it's usually a good indication of very high winds, so you just go back to bed," Jerome Fisher explained.
As it turned out, the weather was probably fine for climbing that day, but by the time the group woke up again around 8 a.m., there wasn't enough time to reach the summit and return to camp safely before darkness fell. They were forced to rest another day at Camp 2.
"I would much rather have been climbing, " Danielle said. "Rest days aren't fun, because besides getting up to eat or go to the bathroom, you just sit in your little tent all day, and your legs get so stiff."
"These camps are nothing like what most people consider a camp site," Jerome said. "They're just spots where you can put up a tent and it's not on a 30-degree slope."
At this point in the climb, meals were freeze-dried food, cooked on a lightweight mountaineering stove in one of the tents' vestibules, or outer compartments for gear storage.
"Freeze dried food is actually a lot better than it was 20 years ago, but having said that, you still get sick and tired of it after eating it for eight days straight," Jerome said.
Cold feet
At 4 a.m. Jan. 5, the team woke up to good weather, and started walking for the summit at 5:15 a.m. An hour later, however, after a brief stop, Danielle's feet started to feel cold. An hour after that, she couldn't feel her toes.
The pair sent the Christiansons on ahead and borrowed a tent belonging to a mountain guiding company. They took off Danielle's boots, and Jerome spent the next hour and a half with her bare feet pressed against his stomach or under his armpits.
"Her feet were completely white," Jerome said. "As they started to thaw, they were very painful, so I knew the damage wasn't permanent, but I doubted we could continue the climb."
"I wasn't happy," Danielle said. "I was thinking it wasn't fair that I'd gone through so much to have this happen."
As her feet improved, Danielle and Jerome made the decision to continue toward the summit, at least to see if her feet could handle it.
They eventually caught up to the Christiansons as well as other groups of climbers from the Normal Route. Of the 20 people reaching the summit that day, Danielle was the first one, at 2:30 p.m.
"I think I got a new sense of hope after my feet recovered," she said. "I didn't think about it, I just went."
"At that altitude you take three breaths, then you take a step, then you take another three breaths," she said. "Some people need to take more breaths between steps and then you move ahead of them."
"The first thing I did at the top was pray," she said. "I was very tired and it was such a relief to get there."
Linda Shindruk is a free-lance writer.
Teen dedicates climb to Lynden man
December 10, 2002 (printed below)
with permission by the Bellingham Herald.
PEOPLE: Tony Goode knows 911 crews well; they've visited his house at least 300 times.
Linda Shindruk
Special to The Bellingham Herald
BY LINDA SHINDRUK
FOR THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
Tony Goode would love to be climbing a mountain this winter, but he can't.
The 46-year-old former construction worker and commercial fisher used to love being outdoors in Washington's wilderness, but since he was diagnosed with mastocytosis nine years ago, he's been out there less and less. In the past two years, as the disease has become more severe and debilitating, he hasn't been out at all and spends most of his time inside his home south of Lynden.
In honor of Goode and his struggle, 17-year-old Danielle Fisher is climbing a mountain for him, to raise awareness and funds to fight the rare disease that has drastically changed Goode's life.
Not just any mountain, however. After successfully reaching the top of many Washington peaks, Fisher, a senior at Burlington-Edison High School, is tackling one of the big ones in her mission to help Goode and other people with mastocytosis.
She leaves Dec. 21 to climb Cerro Aconcagua, an extinct volcano in west central Argentina, just north of Santiago, Chile, and plans to be back by Jan. 12. The climbing team hopes to start their ascent Christmas Eve and reach the summit by Jan. 3.
At 22,831 feet high, the peak is the highest in the Western Hemisphere. She'll do the climb with her father, Jerome Fisher, and family friends Ken Christianson and his son, Jeff.
She's preparing for the physical part of the climb by training two hours every day - a combination of running, step machine, elliptical trainer and weights to prepare her for the 45-pound pack she'll carry.
"The mental part is the tough part," she said. "You just have to have the mental attitude to keep going, plus maybe the luck of not getting sick or hitting bad weather."
Fisher's boyfriend is Goode's son, Nathan. She said she met Goode just more than a year ago, during one of his many hospital stays.
"Tony asked me to tell him a story, and I did," she said. "I think it surprised him, and we just hit it off and I've grown to really care about him."
Fisher said she and her dad have been planning the Aconcagua climb for a year, and just this summer she thought about using it as a way to raise money for Goode's cause.
"When Nathan told me she was going to do this climb to help me, I couldn't talk for about five minutes," Goode said. "It was really overwhelming."
Rare disease
Mastocytosis is a disorder caused by the presence of too many mast cells in a person's body. Affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the United States, it occurs most often in the skin, but for a very small number of those people, it is systemic and affects the internal organs. Goode is one of that very small number.
According to a Web site provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, mast cells release chemicals, such as histamine, that lead to typical allergy symptoms such as itching and abdominal cramping. In some cases, they also can lead to anaphylaxis, an immediate and severe allergic reaction that results in life-threatening narrowing or closing of the air passages and a dramatic drop in blood pressure that can lead to unconsciousness.
The number of mast cells produced by Goode's body is so high that he suffers anaphylaxis almost constantly. A "portacath," a catheter implanted under the skin on his chest, allows him to administer medications directly into his own bloodstream according to a strict schedule.
"The medications help keep the symptoms in check, but there are many times when something will trigger a response and he'll need to take them outside of his schedule," said Teresa Christensen, a nurse in St. Joseph Hospital's intensive care unit and a member of the care team that manages Goode's care when he's admitted to that hospital.
"Sometimes he can get it under control on his own by medicating himself, or sometimes he may be in and out of the hospital in a few hours, or he may end up admitted to ICU for a longer stay," she said.
"I admire Tony so much," she said. "In spite of it all, he has a strong faith in God and amazing determination to keep going and be strong. He's very inspiring."
Record holder
Goode said his doctors have told him they've never heard of anyone in the world with a higher mast cell count than his.
"Every day, often several times a day, I'm dealing with things that set me off and trigger an attack. It can be something new, or it can be something I've used for years, then all of a sudden I react to it," he said.
Goode described a recent incident when he discovered, the hard way, that a new propellant was being used in his inhaler for albuterol, a medication used to dilate the bronchial tubes.
"I took it and immediately my throat started to swell," he said. "In a case like that, I put a quick dose of Benadryl into my portable catheter, and it gives me enough time to hit 911."
"The first responders around here know me real well. They've saved my life so many times," he said. "Since I moved up near Lynden in 1989, they've probably been to my house 300 times."
Wants to climb
The walls in Goode's tiny home are covered with photos of family gatherings and his outdoor adventures. In contrast, shelves on either side of his favorite chair are piled high with the medications and equipment he needs to survive. He said he doesn't go anywhere without a kit fully stocked with all the supplies he needs if he suffers a reaction away from home.
Lately, however, he hasn't been out at all, as his doctors try to figure out why he's recently started retaining fluid.
"My lungs are full of fluid and I'm swelling up a lot," he said. "I've found it a lot more difficult to breathe over the past few weeks.
"If only I could, I'd be right up there climbing that mountain with Danielle."
Linda Shindruk is a freelance writer.
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