I am sure there are different forms of altitude sickness. This is my particular experience with it.
Sicuani, Peru is a beautiful place. A busy agricultural area high in the Andes mountains. I was supposed to be near there for five years. Kind of like the last scene from 9 to 5, I was asked by my boss to move to Peru and do great work there.
I arrived for a ten-day “vacation” in April (2018) to see how it would go. I was doing my best to check it out and understand that this would be my new home for five years starting in July.
Getting acclimated to a new atmosphere
Everything was going well. I stayed in Lima for a few days and then had to travel to where they actually wanted me to work — a bit north of Sicuani in a small village even higher in the Andes. I first had to stay in Cuzco to acclimate to the high altitude. This is a process your body needs to begin to get used to a whole different atmosphere where the air is thinner and not what your body understands immediately. Sicuani, however, is even higher and the town I was staying in is still even higher.
I was 59 at the time and Sicuani is at 11,600ft and 3.5km in the Andes. Where I was staying, a town whose name I cannot remember at this point is a bit higher — 13,000 feet, almost four kilometers. Understand that if you are on an airplane and it depressurizes you need oxygen over 10,000 feet.
Despite being in the tropics, it is so high up, it is always cold and there is no heat. The main animal there is the alpaca and is also the source of protein. The land, typical for that type of climate, is actually tundra a rare sight for most people who do not live at high altitudes or in Siberia. Visitors from all over the world come to Cuzco (11,000 feet/3.3km ) and Machu Picchu (8000 ft/2.4km) both beautiful and at slightly lower altitudes than where I was supposed to be. If you enjoy anthropology and care to study the Inca cultures, those are two places to explore and enjoy. Others visit and it becomes a nightmare. For me, it was a nightmare.
Some people are not built to live over three kilometers above the Pacific Ocean.
I, it turns out, am susceptible to altitude sickness. I had a hard time sleeping and had bad pain in my left chest. It felt like I needed to take a deep breath but my lungs would not fill enough for me to receive the air I needed. No matter how much I would breathe, it was not enough and it was like my lung was unable to inflate anymore but that is what I felt needed desperately. The pain was horrible.
I had no way of getting back down to sea level as I was at the mercy of the person I was staying with whom I was going to work for when I returned permanently. The person did not seem to understand how serious it was. I was stuck there. There were no clinics in the area and he suggested I take a bus to one in another city at the same altitude. I was in no condition to look for a clinic on a bus.
Finally, after a few days, I was scheduled to return to Lima and hoped when I got there I would be fine because I was at sea level. I descended first to Sicuani by car and traveled to Cuzco by bus, I then had to fly back to Lima. I was miserable because of my pain. As soon as I landed, I asked to be taken to a hospital.
Two days in the ICU helped
I ended up in the ICU for two nights and it took a while for me to be able consistently to breathe comfortably again, I think some of that was anxiety out of fear of it happening again. What is worse is that I had to reschedule my flight back to the US delaying it a few days until I was good enough to get on the plane. I still had to fly from Lima Peru to New England — A purely miserable experience because of the pain and I hate flying anyway.
When I visited my doctor in the US, he explained that I had stage two altitude sickness out of three stages. Clearly, I can never return to the high Andes again, as majestic as they are.
The doctors in Lima told me they see what I had all the time and once it happens, the patient can never go back. The only test to see if you are susceptible to altitude sickness is to live at a high altitude. You do not know you will encounter it until you are suffering.
So, as much as I greatly loved the area, I cannot return. I am not built to live at 13000 feet.
One good thing, though. I was in the ICU for two days and when my bill came, I paid out of pocket $1100. It is true what they say, medical expenses are indeed way too high here in the US.