As the 2004 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race speeds toward Nome, four-time champ Doug Swingley sits in Wasilla and wonders if he will ever see again.
Corneal frostbite he suffered in the Alaska Range this year has left him blind in his right eye and with only limited vision in the left.
"Right now, I'm stuck,'' he said. "I've got to have a chauffeur. I can't fly my airplane. I can't watch TV. I can read. (But) my left eye gets pretty tired from doing all the work.''
Even reading, he confesses, is difficult. He must work to focus and compares it to trying to read while inebriated.
He damaged his eyes after deciding it was too risky to negotiate some tricky trail out of Rainy Pass wearing goggles. Not only do goggles have a bad tendency to fog up; even in the best conditions they hamper visibility, he said.
And from the top of Rainy Pass, the trail plunges into the narrow ravines of Pass Creek and the Dalzell Gorge, snaking between cliffs and negotiating narrow bridges built each year from the trunks of whatever trees can be scavenged.
Swingley thought he needed unimpeded vision to get his team through safely.
He paid a steep price for that.
"I froze my corneas, and there's a lot of damage to the corneas,'' he said. "They froze pretty deeply.''
Doctors who performed a computer scan of his eyes in Anchorage found most of the damage "on the back side of my corneas,'' he said. They gave him steroidal drops to put in his eyes, and told him to hope for the best.
Within two or three weeks, he should know if his eyes will recover.
"It's not a whole lot of fun,'' he said, "but they think they're going to get better.''
Swingley has known for years that he needs to be careful with his eyes.
"I had a substantial amount of dry eye,'' he said.
Dry eye makes it uncomfortable to wear contact lenses for extended periods of time, and glasses --as anyone who wears them knows all too well -- can be a hassle in the winter. They invariably fog up.
So, Swingley decided to undergo Lasik eye surgery. The surgery reshapes the cornea to restore a person's vision. It also can increase problems with dry eye, said Dr. Thomas Mader, a specialist in eye surgery at the Alaska Native Medical Center here.
Lasik, he said, can interfere with nerve responses that control the blink reflex. Blinking helps bring fluid to the eye. Less blinking means less fluid.
For people whose eyes normally tear heavily, that might not be a problem. But for people already suffering with dry-eye problems, it can be more than that.
There is a solution, Mader added. Surgeons can plug the passage that naturally drain tears into the nose. That will help ensure more fluid stays over the cornea. Mader suggested Swingley might be advised to look into that when he gets back home to Lincoln, Mont., and if his eyes recover.
Swingley now understands all too well the importance of tears.
"It's the (natural) saline solution that protects your eyes,'' he said. "It's kind of antifreeze for your eyes.''
Swingley said he asked doctors if his eyes will now be more prone to frostbite if they recover. They didn't know but suspected they would since that is the case with most other body parts, he said.
Swingley will give all this serious consideration in the off-season.
"When we get home,'' he said, "I'm going to try to find a way to continue with my occupation. I've got a cousin who's an ice-bike racer, and we're going to sit down and talk about goggles. They've never been able to find a goggle that works, but maybe we can come up with something.''
Swingley admits he isn't ready to give up on long-distance sled dog racing -- even if, at age 47, he became the oldest musher to win an Iditarod in 2001. He said he's wishing for 61-year-old Charlie Boulding of Manley to win this year. Boulding has a shot.
"It'd take the heat off of me,'' Swingley added. "I could send him congratulations like Dick Mackey did to me.''
Mackey was 45 when his team nosed out that of then-26-year-old Rick Swenson to win the 1978 Iditarod. Swenson has been a top-10 finisher almost ever since, and he's won more than anyone -- five times. But his last victory came in 1991 when he was 39. He's now 52.
"It's not an old man's sport,'' Swingley said. "It's not a young man's sport. It's kind of a middle-aged guys sport. I'm not in bad shape by any means. I stay pretty fit all the time, and there's guys out there with other problems. Charlie's got bad knees, a bad back, cancer (which is in remission). And look at (Jeff) King with his sled. Apparently he's feeling old.
"You find ways to compensate.''
King has developed a new, sit-down sled that some have labeled the Iditarod Barcalounger. King said it helps him get more rest, although he almost lost his team this year when he got to resting so well he went to sleep and fell off. He's since added a seat belt.
Swingley is confident that if his eyes heal, he can come up with some innovative solution to the goggle problem.
"Probably the worst thing that anybody could tell me is that I can't do this anymore,'' he added, admitting that would just tend to make him try even harder. But even if he does decide, on his own, that it's not wise for him to race again, don't count on Swingley getting out of the competition.
"I could just give it to my wife,'' he said.
Wife Melanie Shirilla is no slouch as a dog driver. She toured the Iditarod Trail with Swingley in 2002 before they got married under the burled arch that marks the Iditarod finish line in Nome. And she won the respected International Pedigree Stage Stop Sled Dog Race across Wyoming that same year.
Swingley admitted that letting her take over the racing might not be such a bad thing. She's lighter, he said, and some say better with the media. Her husband has a reputation for getting a little prickly about stupid questions.
Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.
Notes from the Iditarod trail
Plettner gets helping hand
Musher Lynda Plettner wasn't quite ready when an Iditarod official told her she'd completed a layover and could leave Ruby on Saturday morning. She'd had a long night.
Late Friday, she was only about an hour's ride from town on an old mining road. But she dozed off and fell off her sled.
"My legs just buckled," she said. "I'm old. I need to be in bed by 10."
Her team, relieved of its 120-pound burden, sped off down the trail, leaving Plettner to walk.
An hour into her hike, fellow Big Lake musher Cim Smyth pulled up and offered a ride. Seeing that Smyth was down to only eight dogs, Plettner hesitated, concerned about taxing an already-thin team. But Smyth convinced her to hop onto a runner, and both mushers kicked their way toward town.
Meanwhile, Plettner's dogs were having a great race. They caught and passed Anna Bondarenko, who was able to stop and tie down the runaway sled. Some time later, Plettner and Smyth found it along the trail.
Plettner, who earlier had rolled her sled in the Dalzell Gorge, seemed more pleased by the help she received from other mushers than discouraged by her misfortune.
Said Plettner, who was in 30th place Sunday night: "We're all caregivers."
-- Marc Lester
Not-so-happy trails
Teller musher Joe Garnie was a little grumpy as he prepared to leave Ruby on Saturday morning. "I'm getting my butt kicked," he said. "Ain't nothing fun about that."
Garnie, who is back in the race after a four-year hiatus, allowed that the first 600 miles of the Iditarod weren't bad and he'd had some good times. But he called his position -- 43rd on Sunday night -- awful.
"I'm not a bit used to it," he said before heading down the hill in Ruby to the Yukon River.
There was one reason for optimism, he said. "Another 400 miles and I'll be home. Be in my sweetheart's arms."
-- Marc Lester
