Researcher who was saved in a world rescue effort says he’d like to return to the cave to finish his work.
A researcher who spent 11 days caught in a Turkish cave after falling in poor health mentioned on Thursday that he thought he would die there earlier than a posh worldwide rescue operation bought him out.
Mark Dickey, 40, appeared relaxed as he spoke to reporters at a hospital in Mersin, southern Turkey, the place he’s recovering from his ordeal.
Requested if he ever gave up hope whereas trapped 1,000 metres underground, Dickey replied, “No. However there’s a distinction between precisely recognising your present threat in opposition to giving up.
“You don’t let issues grow to be hopeless, however you recognise the truth that ‘I’m going to die.’”
Dickey fell in poor health on 2 September with abdomen bleeding whereas mapping the Morca collapse southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains. He vomited blood and had misplaced massive quantities of it and different fluids by the point rescuers introduced him to the floor on Tuesday.
What prompted his situation, which rendered him too frail to climb out of the cave on his personal, remained unclear.
Wearing a blue T-shirt and with an IV line plug hooked up to his hand, the skilled caver from New York thanked the Turkish authorities for performing “rapidly, decisively” to get the medical provides wanted to maintain him down into the cave.
He additionally praised the worldwide effort to avoid wasting him. Groups from Turkey and several other European international locations mounted a difficult operation that concerned pulling him up the cave’s steep vertical sections and navigating by way of mud and chilly water within the horizontal ones.
“This truthfully was a tremendous rescue,” Dickey, who is also an skilled underground rescuer, mentioned. “This was a tremendous instance of worldwide collaboration, of what we are able to do collectively as a rustic, as a world.”
Commenting on the “insane” public give attention to his rescue, he added: “I actually am blessed to be alive. It’s been a troublesome time. Whereas I used to be trapped underground – I used to be trapped for 11 days – I realized that I had a nation watching, hoping, praying that I’d survive: Turkey.”
In a later interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” present, Dickey recalled the second he cleared the cave’s entrance.
“I used to be completely happy to get to the floor and see these stars and scent the contemporary air. That was second,” he mentioned.
ADVERTISEMENTHe additionally paid tribute to his fiancee Jessica Van Ord, who accompanied him on the expedition and left to get medical merchandise that may very well be administered within the cave.
“She made the climb out, she made the climb again in with the medical provides,” Dickey advised the broadcaster. “The second she got here into that cave camp at a thousand metres with 4 luggage value of fluid, that was a sport changer.
“She saved my life, interval,” he continued. “She is one hell of a lady, one hell of a caver, one hell of a rescuer, one hell of a paramedic. She’s superior.”
Dickey will proceed his restoration at Mersin Metropolis Hospital. Laughing and joking throughout his transient media convention on Thursday, he mentioned he would “positively” proceed to discover caves.
“There’s threat in all life and on this case, the medical emergency that occurred was fully unpredicted and unknown, and it was a one-off,” he mentioned, including that he would like to return to Morca cave, Turkey’s third deepest, to finish his activity.x
