I told you there'd be lows... My night's sleep in Lobuche was is a small dark room that stank of paraffin and had no lights or windows to the outside world. I noticed I was coughing a lot and my breathing was wheezy. This was a possible onset of pulmonary oedema, which is essentially when your lungs fill up with fluid and you drown from the inside. I was doing fine until yesterday but now it seemed everything was going wrong. My head thumped and I couldn't take anything for it as I was worried it would thin my blood and cause another nose bleed, which can kill at this altitude of 4910m. I felt a bit dizzy but but I was determined to carry on without Diamox as I'd done so without many problems in Kilimanjaro. I was also feeling a little nautious but I wasn't sure if that was the paraffin or not. Either way, I don't have some divine right just because I've survived altitude before and this night proved it. I was properly, properly worried/paranoid and managed about 5 hours of broken sleep before daylight mercifully came and I could distract myself. On a positive note, the walk to Gorak Shep was fairly easy after some ibuprofen and "De-Cold" donated to me by Sonam. We took some lunch and pushed on to Everest Base Camp. When I say "took some lunch" I nibbled at some macaroni before giving up. My appetite has been ruined since Dingboche.
Everest Base Camp is f***ing miles away, but it's not. We walked gently uphill (and downhill) for an hour or so, then along a ridge - still we couldn't see any tents/flags and Gez and I were running close to empty on energy. Finally we saw our destination, which was in the middle of the Khumbu Glacier. For those who are imagining sheets of ice and snow as a glacier: no. It's more like walking across a badly-made quarry with loose rocks and ice that cracks and melts. None of it is flat, and it constantly goes goes up and down across icy lakes and boulders. Nasty and dangerous, especially if you're low on energy reserves. Anyway, we got there. Our spirits lifted and we took some sublime and ridiculous photos before departing.
The walk back was horrible - it felt more uphill than downhill and it seemed to last forever. For the whole journey there and back it felt like the legs that were transporting me were not mine at all. They were attached to me but I was a passenger in my own body. It was weird, I was knackered and I forced some food down before heading to bed for a VERY early start tomorrow.