James Klemovich, a 76-year-old diabetic, has survived for 10 days in the Nevada desert.
Klemovich and his friend Laszlo Szabo had been checking out mines in a remote part of the state when their car broke down. After four or five days without rescue, Szabo went to get help, while Klemovich, who also has a pacemaker and previously had triple bypass heart surgery, survived by using some of the tricks he remember from his Boy Scout days, such as getting drinking water from melting snow by straining it through a towel. He was eventually found by the military, who were in the area to carry out training exercises.
His wife, Joanne, feared the worst, “I figured maybe they’d had an accident and they were stranded. I thought maybe they were in a mineshaft. All kinds of things were going through my head.” When contacted by authorities she said “I thought it was bad news, but it was very good news.”
Klemovich said he had not panicked but kept a journal and wrote to his wife each day, as well as monitoring how much water he was drinking, while waiting for his colleague to return. He survived by drinking water regularly, as it was able to flush out excess glucose and prevent levels from getting too high. Unfortunately, his friend Szabo was found dead only about a kilometre and a half away from where they crashed.
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