ISTANBUL — An American researcher who spent 11 days caught in a Turkish cave after falling unwell mentioned Thursday that he thought he would die there earlier than a fancy worldwide rescue operation obtained 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 meters (greater than 3,000 ft) underground, Dickey replied, “No. However there’s a distinction between precisely recognizing your present threat in opposition to giving up.
“You don’t let issues turn out to be hopeless, however you acknowledge the truth that ‘I’m going to die.’”
Dickey fell unwell on Sept. 2 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 brought about 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 Croton-on-Hudson, New York, thanked the Turkish authorities for appearing “shortly, decisively” to get the medical provides wanted to maintain him down into the cave.
He additionally praised the worldwide effort to save lots of him. Groups from Turkey and a number of other European nations mounted a difficult operation that concerned pulling him up the cave’s steep vertical sections and navigating by mud and chilly water within the horizontal ones.
Rescuers needed to widen among the cave’s slim passages, set up ropes to tug him up shafts on a stretcher and arrange non permanent camps alongside the best way earlier than the operation might start. Medical personnel handled and monitored Dickey as groups comprised of a physician and three to 4 different rescuers took turns staying by his facet always.
“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 will do collectively as a rustic, as a world.”
Commenting on the “insane” public concentrate on his rescue, he added: “I actually am blessed to be alive. It’s been a tricky time. Whereas I used to be trapped underground – I used to be trapped for 11 days – I discovered 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 satisfied to get to the floor and see these stars and odor the recent air. That was a superb second,” he mentioned.
He additionally paid tribute to fiancee Jessica Van Ord, who accompanied him on the expedition and left to acquire medical merchandise that could possibly be administered within the cave. “She made the climb out, she made the climb again in with the medical provides,” Dickey instructed the broadcaster. “The second she got here into that cave camp at a thousand meters with 4 baggage price of fluid, that was a sport changer.
“She saved my life, interval,” he continued. “She is one hell of a girl, 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 process.
Round 190 individuals from Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Turkey took half within the rescue, together with medical doctors, paramedics and skilled cavers.
The Italian Nationwide Alpine and Speleological Corps mentioned the rescue operation took greater than 100 rescuers from round 10 counties a complete of 60 hours and that Dickey was within the cave for roughly 500 hours.