If you are the praying type please pray for Veronica Ruiz and for the safety of my co-workers and rangers. She is the missing hiker from Mill Valley, who was hiking on Mount Tamalpais. She is my co-worker and this is a very sad situation. I can't explain everything, but it's a horrible thing that no one should go through. It is very heartwrenching for me because yesterday I was looking for Veronica in a beautiful place, on a mountain by the ocean, but all I could think about was my co-worker is out there, it's dangerous and we need to find here. In my line of work we will do anything to save our own. I can't even imagine what her parents are going through.
Yesterday, I was on the one of the rescue teams searching for Veronica on Mt. Tam. I was on a team of four people consisting of a Ranger, Jr. Ranger, one of my co-workers and myself. We separated in pairs and went two different directions but we were going to meetup eventually. I paired up with the Ranger. Every was going fine, other than not finding Veronica, covering as much ground as we could (3 or 4 miles).
I first notice my hands were itching but didn't think anything about it. I climed to the top of a hill and yelled for Veronica and I felt that my mouth was kind of tight. I felt my face and I started to have welts and bumps on my face. I ran to the Ranger, when I felt that my throat was starting to close up. Then my whole body started itching like if I had ants biting me all over my body. What scared my the most was the last time this happened to me my throat was almost closed up in less than 5 minutes after I found out something was wrong with me. We were far away about 1 hour hike back down to the fireman's station.
As the Ranger called for help I calmed my self down. The ability of being able to breathe was slowly being taken away from me so while the Ranger called for help I called Jesse. Jesse said I sounded calm but in my mind I was thinking, "I'm going to die, I'm going into respiratory arrest, please Lord help me, help me." I kneeled down to try to control my breath. Thank God I was trained to control my breathing when I was OC'ed (pepper sprayed) in my face, during my Georgia training. The faster I breathed, the faster the allergy would go through my body.
The Ranger didn't have Epinefrin and Benadryl, the medicine I needed. What felt like an eternity, was probably 15 minutes before the firemen came. The Ranger and the firemen felt like my angels. I was REALLY bad by the time they came to me. The firemen gave my oxygen, while they prepared the epinefrin, and benadryl. Epinefrin is pure adrenalin, which made me cold, somewhat disoriented and was very shaky. When I finally got to the ambulance, they stabalized me and took me to the Emergency Room.
My symptoms got better on the way to the hospital, but I felt and still feel like crap. When I arrived they hooked me up to some steroids to make sure my allergic reaction completely went away. The bad thing is that they don't know what I'm allergic too. I have to go see an allergist to see if he can determine the source of my severe allergic reation. So for the rest of my life I have to walk around with an Epi-Stick (self injection of epinefrin/adrenalin) in case I start feeling the same thing again.
I call it my 3rd near death experience because it was. The 1st time anything like this happened to was this same experience in Georgia, 2nd time my car accident, 3rd was yesterday. I really don't like almost dieing, I'm not scared of dieing because I know I'm going to heaven because Jesus lives in me, but the pain, and actual process and the realization of "If I don't get help I'm going to die" is not fun. But I'm still here, happy and alive.
Melissa
