Scaling Mount Kilimanjaro gives oncologist lesson in teamwork, personal fulfillment
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When Ami P. Vaidya, MD, spent a week hiking to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, everyone in her group hit a “low point” at various times in terms of energy and determination.
For Vaidya — a seasoned hiker — that low point came during the final push to the summit. Somewhere between 15,000 and 19,000 feet, high altitudes caused her oxygen levels to plummet to 60% and subzero temperatures began to take their toll.
“I was having trouble breathing. My friend, who had been having a tough time the first few days, was feeling much better by then, and she and the rest of the team were cheering me on and supporting me,” Vaidya, co-chief of the division of gynecologic oncology and vice chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Hackensack Meridian Health, told Healio. “As an oncologist, I’m used to taking the lead, whether it’s in the operating room or creating a treatment plan for patients. Yet, I know the only way I made it to that summit — even though my legs kept taking me — was the team of people around me. It made me realize much more deeply the importance of a team.”
A ‘bucket list’ item
Although the hike up the highest mountain in Africa took Vaidya and her group 7 days, the dream had been many decades in the making.
Vaidya learned about Mount Kilimanjaro in seventh grade social studies class. She had a “wonderful” teacher who had traveled extensively and tried to instill a sense of the wider world in her young students.
The teacher assigned the class a project in which they would each give a presentation on a country in Africa. Vaidya chose Kenya and got to work preparing her “old school” presentation using posterboard and Xeroxed copies of photos found in National Geographic.
“I learned about the natural environment and a bit about the economy — as much as a 12-year-old can learn,” Vaidya said. “One of the beautiful views I saw in National Geographic was a view of Mount Kilimanjaro from the Kenya side. I thought it would just be such an amazing thing to be able to travel there and climb that mountain.”
Vaidya filed the idea away in her mind but focused on more immediate goals, like completing her education and beginning a successful career in gynecologic oncology. She then got married and started a family.
A few decades later, Vaidya and her husband and become avid hikers, taking several trips to scenic trails around the world.
“We hiked in Switzerland, we hiked up in Utah and we hiked in Spain,” Vaidya said. “It just made me realize how beautiful the world is.”
Kilimanjaro remained on Vaidya’s bucket list.
Then two things happened that nudged Vaidya even closer to her dream.
The first? The COVID-19 pandemic. As restrictions finally began to lift, Vaidya felt eager to get back into the world.
The second?
“I turned 50,” she said. “It occurred to me that if this was something I wanted to do, I had better do it soon, because at some point it may be too hard for me to do.”
Last summer, while talking to friends about vacations, Vaidya mentioned her desire to one day hike Kilimanjaro. One of her friends — her daughter’s classmate’s mother — mentioned her plan to go in January and invited Vaidya along.
“The timing turned out perfectly,” she said. “A lot of things just fell into place, and I felt so lucky they were willing to have me tag along. It felt like something that was supposed to happen.”
‘Why did I wait so long?’
Although she was an experienced hiker, Vaidya trained between September and early January. She did 45-minute exercise tutorials on weekdays, then went for long hikes on weekends on nearby trails along the Palisades or through Bear Mountain in New York.
By January, she was ready to cross this item off the bucket list.
The hiking portion of the trip involved a 7-day process — 5 days to get to the summit of the mountain, and a day and a half to get back down. The group, which included two local expert guides and 30 porters, camped out in tents in sleeping bags. They had foldout tables and chairs for their meals.
“It was called ‘luxury’ camping, but there’s a real limit to what luxury can be,” she said.
Most of the hiking days followed a set schedule: wake up, eat breakfast, hike until lunch, resume hiking after lunch. When they stopped for the day, they’d have dinner and go to sleep.
Vaidya credited her training for why didn’t find the experience difficult until the final hike to the top. On that day, the hikers followed a different schedule. They woke at midnight and began the last portion of the hike in the dark, with a goal of getting to the top as the sun rose.
“All the groups are doing this with head lanterns on — we were like little ants climbing that last part,” she said. “It was frigid — it’s a barren alpine desert, and there’s nothing but black rocks out there.”
Vaidya began struggling to breathe, and she reached her low point.
“I hit a wall,” she said. “It was not easy, but I had these two friends helping and we had the support of our guides. There was a lot of cheering.”
Despite her low oxygen levels and the freezing cold temperatures, Vaidya willed herself to continue the trek to the summit. She was rewarded with an almost otherworldly sense of beauty and triumph.
“You get to the very peak, you get to the crater, and you walk around the whole crater and it’s ice — it’s basically a glacier,” she said. “You’re up there, the sun is rising and you’ve hiked all night from midnight until about 8 am. And you get to the top and you see the sun coming up, and it’s truly an amazing thing. And you realize how hard you worked to get there.”
Vaidya said the experience has taught her that as self-sufficient and authoritative as someone might be, everyone eventually will need to rely on the help of others.
“For those of us who feel like very strong, independent human beings, there is the realization that we couldn’t have done it alone. We truly needed the support of these other people,” she said. “We all shared a common goal that day — to get to the top safely — and we did.”
Vaidya said the experience also underscored the importance of taking time for her own personal dreams and goals, which she said is something women often lose sight of in the midst of busy careers and families.
“Being a physician and a cancer specialist is so noble, but it’s so exhausting — there’s a tremendous level of burnout,” she said. “It’s important to take a moment and figure out something that’s important to you and do it. It took me until I was 50 to do this. I thought, ‘why did I wait so long?’”
Regardless, Vaidya said the experience hadn’t been too late to have a transformative effect on her outlook.
“It’s given me a new take on the importance of working together, being vulnerable, and learning that it’s OK to need help,” she said. “It also made me really understand the goodness and kindness in people.”
For more information:
Ami P. Vaidya, MD, can be reached at ami.vaidya@hmhn.org.
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