Climbing through 16,000 for 23,000 feet, it dawned on me that I was feeling weird. It wasn't sudden or severe, but once it had my attention, hypoxemia was my first thought. Hypo is low or below. A hypodermic needle goes below the dermis, the skin. Ox is oxygen, of course, and emia refers to blood. Hypoxemia means low oxygen in the blood, and it's an efficient killer.My wife and I both had nasal prong (nasal cannula) oxygen in place with plans to switch to masks before FL180. Quickly, I used the finger oximeter and found that my blood oxygen saturation, which should be at least 90%, was 73%. I remember asking, "Theresa, how are you?" "Fine, why?" I came back only with "Okay, let's swap oxygen; if one of us passes out, it shouldn't be me." That got her full and eager cooperation. I arrested the climb, swapped our hoses, took some deep breaths, felt better, and then found and fixed the kink in what was now Mrs. Levinson's oxygen tubing. I diagnosed the oxygen problem quickly because I was ready for it, and if you fly high in an unpressurized cabin, you had better be also.
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