Running, Tsunamis and Hospitals

It’s Wednesday morning in Singapore and I’m lacing up my running shoes getting ready for an early morning run with Ludvig before starting the day’s series of customer and partner meetings.  As I switch on CNN in my hotel room, the headlines state, “Breaking News: 7.8 Earthquake in Indonesia – Tsunami Watch in Effect”.  After watching for a few minutes, I head out to meet Ludvig and we start our run in Suntec City and are soon heading down the F1 track and we start talking about work, our lives and experiences and reminiscing about December 2004 … the time when I ended up in the hospital for two days after the Singapore Marathon, and just several weeks later, while living in Jakarta, the Boxing Day earthquake and subsequent tsunami that took 250,000 lives.

Ludvig and Thomas A were two key players in the Marathon incident. The story is best viewed from my angle and from theirs, since my memory of the time is somewhat affected by time spent in the hospital.  They were both signed up to do the full marathon with me on December 5th to which ultimately 3585 people finished – though Thomas decided to do the half after not feeling well the day before.  We met up near the starting line and soon lost each other during the race as these things often turn out.

The day was very unusual for Singapore in that, as I remember it, the skies were largely cloudless and temperatures unusually hot – around 90f, and still tremendous humidity.  There were water stations every 2k or so, but none were offering Gatorade or any other fuel foods or drinks to replenish the vast amounts of salt and sugar lost during the course of the race.  This was only my fourth marathon after two in Stockholm and one in LA, and I was under-prepared in terms of thinking to bring salt tablets, goo or other nutrition for the race.

I remember finishing and getting my medal.

The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital.

What happened in-between I had to get later from Thomas and Ludvig and it was both scary and kind of funny.

It turns out that after I finished, I did run into Ludvig near the Raffles Hotel and he said that I seemed mostly lucid.  At least as much as one an be after a marathon anyway.  He said there was a very long queue for taxis, and me not wanting to wait, went to the front of the line, handed the loader a 50SGD note and got into a taxi, bypassing the 50 or more people waiting patiently for their rides back.

Apparently what happens next is kind of cloudy.  I went back to the Shangri-La where I was staying and proceeded to pack and get ready to fly back to Jakarta.  Thomas must have called me sometime during this period and though we talked for awhile, he later said that I did not sound “right” so he came over to the hotel to check on me.

I have a vague recollection of him taking me downstairs to get some food into me.  Then seeing that things were not really right, he decided to take me to the local hospital, Thompson Medical Center.

The next thing that I remember is having drips in my arms and the doctors telling me that I could have died due to lack of salts and sugars (hyponatremia and hypoglycemia) if he had not taken me in time.  Basically, I had drunk lots of water and had essentially flushed out all the blood sugars and glucose and sodium that the body and brain need to function.

In a strange twist of fate, Claes – who ran Singapore and was on the same management team as me – and his wife, were in the same hospital and on the same floor delivering a child just the day or two before. So he came to visit me as well.  I can say that if you have to be in a hospital, Thompson in Singapore was a great place to be for a couple of days.  They bring you tea in the morning and afternoon, a newspaper to read and generally look after you as if being in a luxury hotel.  Except you can’t really move around being tethered to the drip machine…

Needless to say, I fully recovered and made it back in time for some other meetings in Jakarta by Wednesday that week.  It was less than three weeks later that the massive earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra and caused the great loss of life throughout South East Asia including Aceh, Phuket and portions of islands off the coast of India and elsewhere.

Though Jakarta was not affected, Ericsson played a major role in helping to get critical telecommunications back in operation as quickly as possible.  Ericsson ended up donating more than $5MUSD in people, equipment and phones to the joint US/UN operation as well as the Indonesia government and local service providers.  Since most of the towers in Banda Aceh were knocked out and non-operational the Ericsson Response team and our local project manager (Eka) took charge and working through a maze of agencies and diplomatic contacts, managed to get service up quickly and with the use of satellite phones helped during the rescue and restoration phase.

These two events were on our minds as we ran through the streets of Singapore and as the sweat poured off my face and body, I remembered just how difficult it is to run in the extreme heat. Even though we only did about 7km, I thought about the satisfaction of completing 42km that day and then the loss of so many lives in the India Ocean and Indonesia oceans from a random earthquake in the ring or fire and immense death toll from the water.

Little did I know that just two months after this, I would end up in a medical tent in Antarctica suffering from minor hypothermia after completing the Antarctica marathon.

After our run the other day, and in the comfort of my hotel and managing through our customer and partner meetings, I was able to reflect on just how lucky we were to be living in air conditioning and the fact that this most recent earthquake never delivered the waiting tsunami.

And how important it is to hydrate well on any run or climb!