Wooden Overcoats Presents: The Coldest Shift

Speaker 1 Tis the season for all your holiday favorites.

Speaker 2 Like a very Jonas Christmas movie. And Home Alone on Disney Plus.

Speaker 3 Did I burn down Joy? I don't think so.

Speaker 2 Then Hulu has National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Speaker 1 We're all in for a very big Christmas treat.

Speaker 2 All of these and more streaming this holiday season. And right now, say big with our special Black Friday offer.
Bumble Disney Plus in Hulu for just $4.99 a month for one year.

Speaker 2 Savings compared to current regular monthly price.

Speaker 1 And $12.1.

Speaker 2 Offer for ad supported Disney Plus Hulu bundle only. Then $12.99 a month or then current regular monthly price.
18 plus terms apply.

Speaker 3 I am so excited for this spa day. Candles lit.
Music on.

Speaker 3 Hot tub warm and ready.

Speaker 3 And then my chronic hives come back. Again, in the middle of my spa day.
What a wet blanket. Looks like another spell of itchy red skin.

Speaker 3 If you have chronic spontaneous urticaria or CSU, there is a different treatment option. Hives during my next spa day? Not if I can help it.
Learn more at treatmyhives.com.

Speaker 4 you may all really enjoy. It's called The Coldest Shift and it follows Dr.
Rachel Rachel Varnum who five years ago at the height of the pandemic was sent to Antarctica by the British Antarctic Survey.

Speaker 4 At the time it was the only COVID-free continent and Rachel was one of the main people responsible for keeping it that way.

Speaker 4 It's a charming, relaxed and actually very warm listen which follows her voyage on the Royal Research ship James Clark Ross.

Speaker 4 As doctor, she had to get to know everyone, so you get to meet many of the men and particularly the women carrying out essential Antarctic research and running the ship.

Speaker 4 It's The Guardian and the Sunday Times pick of the week, and right now, I'd love to share with you the first episode of the series. I really hope you'll enjoy it.

Speaker 3 This is a hat chick podcast.

Speaker 4 This podcast was recorded in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The events you will listen to took place five years ago to the week of release.

Speaker 4 Good evening.

Speaker 5 The coronavirus is the biggest threat this country has faced for decades, and this country is not alone.

Speaker 3 Let me begin tonight with the latest figures. 4,043,686 tests have been carried out in the UK, including 131,458 tests yesterday.

Speaker 5 All over the world, we're seeing the devastating impact of this invisible killer.

Speaker 6 All of the research that's being done in Antarctica has been put on hold as a result of COVID.

Speaker 6 Imagine getting a case of COVID on the most remote place on earth, how difficult it would be to make sure that people got the medical treatment they needed.

Speaker 6 So, at the moment, everything's on hold with the intention, the researchers say, of getting back to work as soon as they get the all clear from the relevant authorities.

Speaker 1 How's that microphone for you, Rachel? Is Is that about enough?

Speaker 3 Yes, that's lovely, I think. There's a lot of height issues going on.
He's like, oh, Rachel's very small. Yeah, you did promise me you'd come back from the Antarctic tour and blonde.

Speaker 3 And skinny.

Speaker 4 The Coldest Shift.

Speaker 4 Episode 1.

Speaker 4 The job.

Speaker 3 Oh, I suddenly feel a bit nervous. Hello, do you think we're supposed to just start?

Speaker 7 This is Jen, my best friend. We've just been out sailing so we didn't have time to drive home, so we're all on the boat.

Speaker 7 I mean, we're living living off-grid technically right now.

Speaker 3 I did something quite exciting, and you were about to do something quite exciting. A long time ago, I ended up having to tell my family I was going to do something exciting.

Speaker 7 So, I think everything's arrived. I haven't unboxed it yet, so we can do that this evening and try and do it.

Speaker 3 Then, my sister said, Oh, why don't you keep a really good record of it? So, I did, and then we decided to make a podcast about it. Essentially, somehow you've stuck like glue to my side.

Speaker 4 You can't get rid of me. I'm like a fan sale.
Keep lingering.

Speaker 3 I'm Rachel Varnum and I'm Jenna Plank.

Speaker 7 So we trained together at Southampton Medical School and I'm here for a bit of moral support while she tries to sort out her life. Free departure.
So Jen's taken my job.

Speaker 7 She was going to drive my car but I've decided that she's too reckless for that. She would take my boyfriend but I dumped him.

Speaker 3 I landed a job as the medical officer on the Royal Research ship, the James Clark Ross, on the 2020-21 season going down to the Antarctic.

Speaker 3 I jumped on the bandwagon and applied for it and got the job for the next year.

Speaker 3 I couldn't be any more proud.

Speaker 3 I purposely haven't shown you any pictures or talked to you very much about my trip because I wanted to go through it with you in a slightly more hilarious fashion than a PowerPoint presentation.

Speaker 4 Very good.

Speaker 4 October 2020.

Speaker 3 I pride myself on telling a lot of my junior colleagues that I'm probably the only doctor with three C's at A-level. So, academically, I should never have got into medicine.

Speaker 3 And I expect there was some equality and diversity act that got me in from the fact that I'm from Essex and I'm ginger.

Speaker 3 I think I was super lucky that my mum was a teacher, and my dad worked in outdoor education. Most of our evenings and weekends as kids, we spent being being the extra person on one of his trips.

Speaker 3 So whether that was sailing or canoeing or doing some sort of walk in the Brecken Beacons to try and find his lost DOV students. I loved every second of it.

Speaker 3 And I remember my dad saying to me, You should be in a position where you can always find your way out of something.

Speaker 3 And by that, he meant if you got stuck in the middle of a forest, you should always know which way north is. You should know exactly how to read a map at any point.

Speaker 3 And about 100 meters, you should know how many of your steps that is at any one point.

Speaker 3 The human body works beautifully 99% of the time.

Speaker 3 If you think about how often it works, it makes sense that when things do go wrong, you can work it out and it's very much like engineering or plumbing or electricity or whatever.

Speaker 3 You can sort of go, okay, well, so they've had a half sec and that's because of X, Y, and Z, because that's there and that's there.

Speaker 3 So actually, I say I'm not academic, it's because I'm a doer and a thinker rather than a writer.

Speaker 7 When I first moved to Plymouth, I met this guy called Fraser. He was a sailor, so obviously we went out for beers or whatever.
And he then just disappeared off the face of the planet.

Speaker 3 Plymouth Hospital is a major trauma centre, so it's extremely busy. Just as you walk in, there's the senior doctor station, the senior nursery station.

Speaker 3 Behind there, there's a giant picture of the Antarctic Peninsula. And it meets you every time you go on shift and every time you leave shift.

Speaker 7 I remember saying to my boss, oh, where's Fraser gone? She's always gone to the Antarctic, as if it was completely normal that people just went to the Antarctic.

Speaker 7 And I suddenly thought, oh my gosh, I have to do this. I have to go to the Antarctic.

Speaker 7 There was about a 12-hour wait to be seen in a busy AE department all night. You're the registrar on call, so you are knee-deep in dying people and time wasters, two categories.

Speaker 7 And then you've got an hour to shower, straighten your hair, make you look less tired, and then go to a job interview.

Speaker 7 So I turned up feeling like a new woman, but probably looking like a very old one.

Speaker 7 and and then you walk into an interview room that's full of people that you know because the people i was interviewed by the people i work with and i'd handed over to one of them the day before so it was all a bit odd really and i don't know if you've done a night shift john but you're so disinhibited that anything that falls out of your mouth could be nice it could be nasty who knows i'm a bit delirious a bit delirious yeah 10 hours yeah

Speaker 7 in fact they asked me one question they said rach obviously you're the doctor on call 24 hours a day seven days a week the whole of this time if you've had a drink do you then feel safe giving medical advice whatever and i said to the lady interviewing me who was my boss and i know her well we have a good rapport i said well anne i'm an alcoholic like you so i could do with a tea break and then i realized i was in a job interview

Speaker 7 and i just called the interviewer an alcoholic

Speaker 3 hello and how are you hi my name's anne hicks i'm an emergency medicine consultant you will get a b tech in computer science at the end of this Anne.

Speaker 8 I should hope so, actually.

Speaker 8 You still can't see me though, yeah?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 8 I've been involved with the British Antarctic Survey Medical Unit for the last 16-ish years.

Speaker 8 I've been south twice, and I'm currently the chair of the international committee that gives medical advice to both the Committee of Managers of National Antarctic Programmes, which is about 52 nations, work closely with NASA and the other space programmes,

Speaker 8 and also gives advice to the Scientific Committee of Antarctic Research. So apart from that, I'm a full-time mother.

Speaker 3 And gin lover.

Speaker 8 I wasn't saying that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but they can't hear me, so it's fine.

Speaker 8 Yeah, note, I haven't said that.

Speaker 8 What doesn't get you this job is a first in this, best at this, best at that, best at the other. You can be all that, but it is purely about personality.

Speaker 8 As long as you're all right at medicine, the most important thing that we need in a doctor is to go, I'm not sure what to do, I'll ask.

Speaker 8 Rachel has the ability to get on with people, she has the ability to be pretty accepting of people from all sorts of different ways, and she has the ability to make people feel relaxed and okay.

Speaker 8 So it's a very different set of skills, ones which are unique to working in remote medicine.

Speaker 3 And I went into medicine for lots of different reasons, but none of them was to do adventure stuff because I didn't know it existed.

Speaker 3 But when I started doing medicine at Southampton and you meet loads of really bonkers people along the way, and one of my good friends, she's this incredible army medic who does charity treks every year, bonkers stuff.

Speaker 3 And I thought, you know what, this is right up my street.

Speaker 7 Most of my friends and nurses actually rather than doctors. A lot of them said, oh, how many nurses are going with you? And you go, none.
Oh, okay. Are you taking a dentist? No, that's me as well.

Speaker 7 Are you taking a physio? No, that's me. Are you taking an OT? No, that's still me.
So all of the things that you have in a hospital, we've had training on essentially.

Speaker 8 Oh, Rachel, why would you do that as a medic?

Speaker 4 It's ridiculous.

Speaker 8 So I love working in emergency medicine and that's because I love working in a team and I love working with the porter's reception, all of the nurses, the MD team, the whole shebang.

Speaker 8 That's me in an essence. So the whole idea of being the one woman hospital is terrifying.
And the simple stuff becomes ridiculous.

Speaker 8 One of our doctors who'd been in Halley, he was quite disappointed because he was Scottish.

Speaker 3 Is that separate or?

Speaker 8 He hadn't seen anyone for seven months and we offered to reduce his salary according to how many patients he'd seen.

Speaker 8 But the first patient that he saw after a winter of darkness at Halley, which is 96 days of complete darkness,

Speaker 8 which is difficult to imagine. was someone he knew really well who had decided to eat his first ever peanut butter sandwich before going out and running around outside.

Speaker 3 I'm already grabbing my EpiPen.

Speaker 8 Well, he wasn't because he hadn't done any medicine for ages. This was one of his mates.
He came in in anaphylaxis, the response to an allergic reaction, which is bread and butter to us as doctors.

Speaker 8 We wouldn't think twice about it. And according to the station leader at the time,

Speaker 8 That doctor's first response was unrelatable in the context of this podcast, but was not,

Speaker 8 don't worry, I'm a doctor, trust me. It was a few words which implied he was having a panic.
And so he turned around,

Speaker 8 walked away, counted to ten or something, and then came around and said, I'll come in again. And then he then actually looked after him.
But it was so long since he'd been a doctor.

Speaker 8 And I think we underestimate the metamorphosis that we go through when we get into work, we take off our coat and we put our stethoscope around our neck. and then we become Dr.
Ann and Dr.

Speaker 8 Rachel and equally when we take that off we stop being that and I think if Mike had been given the option of phoning 999 he would

Speaker 8 and the patient's fine it was all okay but it was extraordinary and afterwards he wrote a brilliant reflection about the chaos in his brain.

Speaker 3 And you're so right. It happens in ED, doesn't it?

Speaker 3 When you're so overwhelmed with everything else that's going on and it just takes that one nurse to go, Rach, I've gotten the EpiPen ready for that adaphylaxis that you're looking at.

Speaker 3 And I guess he just didn't have that, did he?

Speaker 4 No, you don't.

Speaker 8 And it can be extraordinary, the things that you don't see. So there are so many elements that undermine your confidence.
It's a very strange place in which to try and be a professional doctor.

Speaker 3 So Antarctica is the harshest and most unforgiving environment, probably on Earth.

Speaker 3 And it's incredible to think that in the 1900s these men set off and so the first real person to discover the polar regions, Antarctic, was in 1773 by Captain James Cook.

Speaker 3 His crew crossed the Antarctic Circle and then in 1820 there was a Russian ship that was first recorded to see the Antarctic land.

Speaker 3 And then in 1821 a British captains, Captain John Davies, was the first to set foot on the continent.

Speaker 3 And then, more famously, in 1898, there was a Belgian ship, the Belgica, and they set sail for the Antarctic, getting trapped in the ice.

Speaker 3 They described really beautifully the ship creaking and breaking with the pressure of the ice

Speaker 3 crushing the boat before them.

Speaker 3 In the early 1900s, Shackleton and Scott started that British polar exploration that we all know about. So, Shackleton, born in 1874 in Ireland, moved to London.

Speaker 3 His dad was a doctor and he was head-hunted by the National Antarctic Expedition.

Speaker 3 So the Discovery left Britain in 1901.

Speaker 3 And on the team, there was Scott in brackets of the Antarctic. Shackleton, there was a couple of others.
They set off in 1902, headed for the South Pole.

Speaker 3 They didn't have enough preparation, they didn't have enough food, they didn't know how to use their dogs. There's a report that scurvy was a real issue.

Speaker 3 Now, scurvy isn't isn't really something we see anymore. Essentially it's a disease that was big in the early 1900s, formed from a lack of vitamin C and it just makes you feel awful.

Speaker 3 You feel weak and tired and everything aches.

Speaker 3 You can get some gum disease, your skin can start breaking down, your hair becomes very brittle, you get this sort of intravascular coangulopathy and you bleed to death.

Speaker 3 So they were plagued with problems and we were going just four miles a day. They turned back and I think the other thing they suffered with on the way back was snowblindness.

Speaker 3 The UV hits your cornea like a sunburn of your cornea. Very, very painful and it can cause visual loss, very, very sensitive to light.

Speaker 3 And it must be really quite horrendous for these chaps who were already battling against everything.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's obvious now, but even to those back in the 1900s, that taking a doctor to such a harsh and remote environment is almost essential.

Speaker 3 But compared to then, in the 1900s and now, the environment is no less challenging. It's reliably harsh and and very hostile

Speaker 9 I just think wow you're gonna be responsible for everybody's health and well-being on a ship thousands of miles from anywhere that's like huge responsibility and bonkers so you can have your bonkers back again

Speaker 3 going into the ocean as potentially one of the only women I think in reality there was actually about five women I was really keen to get some advice and there's a lady called Dee Kafari who you now know lots about yeah who's one of the most inspirational female sailors, certainly in my life, but hopefully in a lot of other people's lives.

Speaker 9 I've sailed around the world now six times on my own, the right way, the wrong way, as part of a team and leading a team.

Speaker 9 Having had to be my own medic at times going around the world, remote medicine is pretty tough.

Speaker 9 You've got the brain power and you've got the qualifications to actually do it properly rather than make it up as I have to.

Speaker 3 So tell me about your medical stuff at sea then, because, you know, as a doctor, I feel nervous going.

Speaker 9 How did you feel as being the doctor whilst not being a doctor all that medical training that you do do in preparation you forget all the technical names so I literally relabel everything into stuff I understand totally the right thing to do we're talking basics here it would say stop poo more poo

Speaker 9 pain pain threshold and it's like high medium and low because out there you kind of have to deal with it actually it's doing things like that when you've only had 20 minutes sleep everything has to become so practiced and such a routine that it becomes habits.

Speaker 9 So it doesn't matter how tired or emotional or drained you are, you still go through exactly the same process no matter what's going on.

Speaker 3 When I go down south my hospital base is in Plymouth so you know several thousand miles away and I was thinking there's going to be several times in theory where things are going to get really scary.

Speaker 3 I'm going to feel very alone. And I suddenly thought about your story of going up the mast in the southern ocean.

Speaker 9 Oh yeah, that was a low point that still haunts me today.

Speaker 3 I'd have to bring it up.

Speaker 9 No, no, that's fine. I'm not good with heights, but one of the things you have to do is at some point go up your mast.

Speaker 9 At the top of your mast are your wind instruments, and they get all the information which allows the autopilot to drive the boat for you.

Speaker 9 So when you're on your own, this is a pretty fundamental bit of kit. I went through this big storm in the southern ocean.
There was lots of thunder and lightning. And because there's not a lot...

Speaker 9 around down there the lightning generally tends to find the top of your mast and it fried the circuit board in the wind instruments So I knew I had to go up and change it.

Speaker 9 I'd been in the southern ocean for so long and the conditions had been so bad that 30 knots felt okay because I'd been in 50 knots for so long.

Speaker 9 I'd picked a window and went up the rig, but I kind of got stuck halfway and I don't know if it was me freezing or the gear freezing, but I got to the point where I couldn't go up or I couldn't go down.

Speaker 9 And all I wanted to do was have a good cry, but of course that wasn't going to help anything either.

Speaker 9 You kind of look around the boat as if you're going to find somebody suddenly appear that can help you out. And it's all these mental mind games that's going on.

Speaker 9 You're like, well, I've got to deal with this.

Speaker 9 So it took me about 90 minutes, but in the end, I had to kind of get enough courage to disconnect myself from what I was using to climb up the mast and kind of free climb myself down.

Speaker 9 And then I had a good cry. But the frustrating thing was, I still had the job to do.
So at some point, I still had to go up there and get it done.

Speaker 9 And then, of course, when you're having this paddock, you then realise that about five hours ago, you sent a message to the team at home to say, I'm going up the rig, and you thought, oh, I really should let them know that I'm back down, that I'm successful.

Speaker 9 They're really stressed because you're thousands of miles away and they can do nothing to help you should something happen.

Speaker 9 So it's actually harder, I think, for the people left behind because they have to carry on life as normal with this worry of whatever you're getting yourself into.

Speaker 9 Whereas you're okay because you're dealing with it day to day and you know exactly what's going on and how you feel.

Speaker 8 So when I was on the ship there was an occasion where we were doing the same bit of science and going backwards and forwards for the same mile for a whole day

Speaker 8 and in the morning I went up onto the deck and I saw this huge iceberg, table iceberg, a kilometre across. So I took a picture of it and went downstairs and loaded up the picture and sent it.

Speaker 8 And so the photo went and anyhow later on that same day the sun had changed and caught the same iceberg from a different angle. And it was really quite stunningly beautiful.

Speaker 8 And so I took another picture. And then my husband wrote back to me saying,

Speaker 8 Olivia's ill, the washing machine's blown up, the car's just failed its MOT, there was something else that was happened. Great bleep iceberg.

Speaker 8 And I realised. that I'd fallen into the trap of being completely lost in what I was doing.

Speaker 9 You're going to be away for a period where you're going to miss birthdays. You're going to miss weddings.
You're going to miss babies being born.

Speaker 9 You're going to miss your own birthday and you're going to miss Christmas and it's always the friends and family and loved ones that, you know, hits you quite deep.

Speaker 3 So spent the morning loading the car. driving across the entire country and going to quarantine tomorrow.

Speaker 3 So luckily for me the quarantine location is very very close to my parents house so I've told them I'm not going to see them before I go.

Speaker 3 I have just parked up five hours 48 minutes after driving away from my home outside their house so

Speaker 3 see if they're expecting me.

Speaker 3 It'd be weird if we didn't mention Covid. Obviously 2020 is the year that Covid brought us all to our knees but it's it's changed everything from my perspective of sort of leaving, really.

Speaker 3 So, packed everything, said goodbye to everyone at work, and then had to have four separate leaving evenings.

Speaker 3 I had to cook the same meal six times so my friends didn't get jealous.

Speaker 3 All the lights are out.

Speaker 3 What if they're not in?

Speaker 3 Baz have gone to some quite impressive lengths to stop anyone going south, taking Covid or having COVID when we're down there.

Speaker 9 If we

Speaker 3 have a case of Covid down there, we haven't really got the hospital environment. So, if someone gets sick, then it's going to be really tricky to manage, and

Speaker 3 we just don't have the resources you do. We don't have the intensive care support, but also we need to be the forerunners in making sure that we keep the Antarctic the only continent without COVID.

Speaker 3 What are you doing here?

Speaker 3 Hello!

Speaker 3 How are you?

Speaker 3 I'm surprised.

Speaker 3 You wanted a delivery from the Antarctic.

Speaker 4 You told me not to tell you. You haven't been there yet.

Speaker 4 Oh,

Speaker 4 all right, drop it in.

Speaker 3 We'll have that conversation again next year.

Speaker 4 Prince Dark something rather nice.

Speaker 3 Nice to see you.

Speaker 4 Surprise! Surprise!

Speaker 9 Oh, she's not gonna let go.

Speaker 3 I sort of said, oh, I better go because the traffic's looking bad. I'll catch you later.
And then I left.

Speaker 3 Which is a bit of a cop-out,

Speaker 3 but it's better than watching my mum cry.

Speaker 4 The Coldest Shift is presented by Dr. Rachel Varnum and Dr.
Jenna Plank.

Speaker 4 The series is produced by Rachel Varnum and John Wakefield. The executive producers are Claire Broughton and Laura Varnum.

Speaker 4 The studio engineer was Alex O'Donovan.

Speaker 4 With thanks to the British Antarctic Survey and the British Antarctic Survey Medical Unit, find out more about their crucial work at bas.ac.uk.

Speaker 4 For full credits, see our podcast notes.

Speaker 4 Follow Rachel's adventures on Instagram at ColdestShiftPod.

Speaker 4 It's John again, and yes, that was my voice in the credits. There are three episodes of The Coldest Shift Out Now, and you can subscribe to the series on all the podcast apps of your choice.

Speaker 4 There are Antarctic postwomen, space weather engineers, seals, and some really fun drama still to come. And if you enjoy it, do leave us a nice review.

Speaker 4 Thank you as ever for listening to Wooden Overcoats. It was wonderful to meet so many of you in person at our anniversary live show.

Speaker 4 And I hope you're having a really, really good autumn and will join Rachel on her long Antarctic voyage. Enjoy yourselves.

Speaker 3 The Fable and Folly Network, where fiction producers flourish.

Speaker 3 If you love to travel, Capital One has a rewards credit card that's perfect for you. With the Capital One Venture X card, you earn unlimited double miles on everything you buy.

Speaker 3 Plus, you get premium benefits at a collection of luxury hotels when you book on Capital One Travel. And with Venture X, you get access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide.

Speaker 3 Open up a world of travel possibilities with the Capital One Venture X Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply.
Lounge access is subject to change. See CapitalOne.com for details.