I excitedly laced up my hiking boots, and left on my next trip up the mountain. I remember making it just past the out-jutted rock you could see from my backyard, when I must’ve blacked out.
I woke up in a hospital that I didn’t recognize, surrounded by doctors I didn’t know and hooked up to equipment I’d never seen before.
They explained to me that I’d collapsed on the hiking trail and had been found a few hours later by a local jogger who had gotten me help. I had been moved to a hospital in a larger city a couple hours away, as it was determined that the local clinic was unable to properly assess me. I was badly sunburnt and very dehydrated, but what concerned the doctors the most were my scan results.
