The Thai Cave Rescue

found themselves trapped inside with no way out. The world was transfixed as rescuers spent days trying to find the boys soccer team, and remarkably they found them two and a half miles deep within the cave and stationed together on a dry hill. But it was one thing to find the boys and to send in medical or eating food to help keep them alive. Getting them out safely, though, that was an entirely different matter. Eventually, the rescue team came up with a bold and risky plan and they

shared it with the boys. They were just like, yep, get us out of here. And I felt like at that point I could have said tomorrow we're coming in. There'll be a flying carpet, you'll all sit on it and we'll magic you out of the cave, and they would have had the same response, because I think after two weeks, yeah, I just want to get the hell out of there. They just wanted someone to take charge

and get them out. That's doctor Richard Harris or Harry, the Australian doctor, an underwater cave explorer who had to swim deep within the flooded cave to try and rescue the boys. This is the moment of truth, when this whole fanciful idea will actually become reality. And I'm about to meet these children who I've heard so much about and thought so much about for such a long time, and now I'm going to see them face to face, and I'm going to have to make it to see.

On today's episode a doctor Heath's an unexpected call. I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. By the time Harry got to Thailand, the soccer team had been stuck in the cave for nearly two weeks and things were looking bleak. The inside of the cave was like a labyrinth miles long, flooded with murky and turbulent water and full of narrow tunnels. One former Thai Navy seal had

already died while navigating the flooded cave. The boys ranged in age from eleven to sixteen, and in order to get out of the cave, they would need to put on oxygen mass and swim through highly complex submerge portions of the cave. Experts worried that the boy's panic reflexes would invariably kick in, which would lead them to tear

off their oxygen mass and potentially drown. Thai government officials in the military worked with experts from around the world to explore every idea they could come up with to save these boys, from trying to pump water out of the cave to seeing if they could try to keep them alive inside the cave until the monsoon season had passed. But for a variety of reasons, these ideas wouldn't work, and then finally they came up with a plan a

Hail Mary passed to rescue the soccer team. They would innesetize the boys, fit them with an oxygen mask, and then swim them out while they were fully unconscious. But in order for it to work, they needed to find someone with a specific set of skills to lead the rescue mission. They needed to find someone who is an expert cave diver and an anthesiologist. They needed my guest today,

Australian diver and doctor Harry. Harry and I started our conversation by talking about how he got involved with the Thai cave rescue mission in the first place. Harry had been finishing up with a patient in an operating room in Australia when he got some texts. They were from his friend Rick Stanton, a British cave diver who was already on the ground in Thailand trying to help with the rescue. So it was about quarter to seven on that Thursday morning when Rick and I were exchanging texts,

and Rick was very despondent on that morning. He was reinforcing his completely pessimistic outlook on that day, as he had for several days about the possibility of getting these children out. He was just really at the point where he felt like the best thing he could do was leave Thailand because he was so despondent that there was zero chance of getting these children out. And then just at the end of the text message, he just threw in this one line about what do you think about

sedating the children to bring them out? And I just I looked at this message and I did a double take because it had never occurred to me that someone would come up with an idea so preposterous and so out of left field. And so that's kind of where the conversation finished earlier that morning, and I just replied with one mind saying it's out of the question. And I said, look, it's just a ridiculous idea. But I said, if you'd like us to come to Thailand, maybe there's

something I can do. I just had a sense that I needed to be there and my skill set was important for this rescue, and I said, perhaps I can swim to the end of the cave provide medical care for these children whilst you guys come up with a better idea. Basically, I see, and I know you know, as far as you knew at the time, only one person had ever been under water under anesthesia and survived, right, So this was this was an idea that you rejected outright.

And so tell me, as an experienced medical professional, as someone who practices anesthesia, what were the risks associated with giving these boys and their coach anesthesia? In the keen environment. Well, I don't think you have to be a cave diver or an anesthesiologist to realize that submerging an unconscious person for three hours and expecting that they're going to still be alive three hours later, you know, is fraught with peril.

So I thought that for sure, these kids will flood the mask and drown inside their mask at some point over that three hour journey. But also I thought, even if that doesn't happen, you know, at some stage their head will just fall forward and they'll obstruct their airway. I mean, anyone who's done a first aid course knows that an unconscious person we have to protect their airway

at all costs. And the third thing, I thought, well, even if those two things don't happen at some point in three hours, then they will slowly succumb to hypothermia. They just they'll dive cold basically, and under anesthesia, the water especially strips heat from your body very very rapidly, and so over three hours I knew from my experience in the operating theater and elsewhere, that your core temperature will drop rapidly, and by the time they got out,

they would be dead from that alone. So yeah, it was I had plenty of reason to think that there's no way this could possibly work. Yeah, and there's also the practical considerations of administering anesthesia in those conditions. Right, there's germs in the water, there's improper lay, there's no light other than a headlamp. Right, So you're probably concerning you might not even be able to see things clearly. And so I imagine as a physician, all of that,

on top of everything you've just described, is just daunting. Yeah. I hadn't even really got to think about the practical logistics of administering the anesthetic. There were just so many theoretical concerns barring my thought processes about moving into that

next stage of thinking how we'd approach it. But to be honest, as it turned out, I was less concerned about some of those practical issues because I have worked in environments where I have administered anna sesia to people in less than perfect conditions, and I've worked in remote

areas doing surgery. I've worked in helicopter rescue services where you might be at the roadside in a ditch, administering those sorts of critical care procedures to very sick or injured patients, so that, per se didn't worry me as

much as the theoretical concerns of the children being underwater. Yeah. So, despite all your reservations, Harry, you end up choosing to go to Thailand, and your wife Iona has a warning for you on the way out the door, because she's very concerned about how this may affect your professional reputation and your personal well being if things don't go well. Yeah.

I guess I was still in that frame of mind where, like all adventurous young men, I was still thinking, this is a bit of an adventure, and this will be an exciting thing to be part of, and obviously it's a very worthy cause. I don't really want to make secrets about the fact that I was quite keen to

get over there because I've done all this training. I felt like I had the expertise, and so I was showing perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm for the whole the whole lark, and Fiona, being the sensible and smart woman, she has just pointed out a few home truths about you know, what will happen to my career if these boys die essentially under an anesthetic, which I will be held without question, you know, singly responsible for How will that affect my career, my life, how will that appear

in the media, and what will it do to my mental health? You know, being responsible for the lives of these kids. And you know, that was my first reality check, I guess, and certainly took the edge off my enthusiasm and make me think a lot more seriously about you know, what I was embarking on. And in fact, Rick Stanton had said something a little bit similar to me on the telephone just as we were about to ring off.

He said to me, you know, I know you're keen to get over here, but I'm just going to tell something. You're likely to swim to the end of this cave and meet these boys as I have, and at the moment they're all very healthy and upbeat and happy looking children, and then most likely you and I are going to swim away and leave them to die, So that don't underestimate how unpleasant that that's going to be. So yeah, I'm surrounded by smart people, luckily, who have more insight

into some of the stuff than me. So yeah, it was that was the first moment that I had cause to think about is this a smart thing to be getting involved with? So you know, you heed the call right and you end up going to Thailand. When you land in Thailand and you meet your way to the KIV site, what is the scene like there? Well, I've been to major incidents and I've seen chaotic accident scenes and so forth, but this was on such another level

like I've never experienced. And there's this sea of different uniforms and people very busy marching back and forth, and thousands of people and a whole infrastructure around that. You know, this village had popped up with people providing catering and clothing and haircuts, whatever you needed. You know, it was all there on site, and so it was. It was huge. I realized I've been dropped into the middle of something very very big. But all I wanted to do is

find my British friends and talk talk caves. So I just put my head down and sprinted really away, searching for the British divers, you know, find out for myself what this cave was actually like, because that was my first responsibility was to my own safety and just find out whether I was going to be safe in the cave, because you know, when guys like Rick tell me that, you know, oh, Harry, the caves it's a bit sporting, but you'll be all right. You know how the British

are very understated. You know that is not reassuring to me at all, because I've been cave diving with these guys and in the world they are bloody good. So you know, I've got to make sure that i can get my large backside through this cave without endangering myself

and therefore putting the mission at risk. Yeah, and you also, in addition to needing to see the cave firsthand and also make sure that you were physically capable of navigating it, you were absolutely adamant that you had the chance to meet the boys up close and personal. That first night that I did meet up with the British divers, there was quite a lot of pressure on me not to go into the cave and see the kids. They wanted me to focus on finessing the plan and practicing with

some kids at the pool the next day. But I just had in my mind I had to actually swim the cave to actually just see these kids for myself, see the environment that they were in, and try and make this at that point, completely ridiculous hypothetical idea about anesthetizing them into something a bit more concrete in my mind, you know, I I had no idea whether I could even contemplate it until I'd seen the whole thing for myself, and then at least I would be able to talk

with some more authority about whether it was a idea or whether it was something that I could be talked into. So the next morning, Craig Challon, my good mate from Australia. He had arrived a couple of hours after me the evening before, and I just knew he was a guy who was completely unflappable, totally reliable in a crisis. I just wanted a trusted friend there with me by my side. So anyway, Craig and I headed into the cave the next morning. I mean, to dive into a cave which

is actively flooding is never a good idea. We would never do that. So it was challenging and the flow was significant. It was still hard work pulling yourself along the ropes into the flow. The water visibility was very poor.

There was parts of the cave where you had to feel in front of you to feel the size and shape of the little restrictive crack that you had to post yourself through and then work out, okay, might have to turn myself at forty five degree angle to fit through there and crawl through with the rock touching your front and your back. You'd be diving underneath. You'd pop up into a canal section, so it's like a river in an underground passage. You'd be wading or swimming through,

dragging cylinders and equipment through there. You might have to climb out of the water, climb over the rocks for a while with all your equipment again back into the water. Off you go again. So about a three hour journey, and then the rope at the very end towards the children actually changes color to a much thinner blue rope. And so I knew that we were getting close when

we found that rope. And at that point, just as I see the shimmering surface just above me, the moment before my head comes up, I just I remember feeling very very anxious, thinking this is it. This is the moment of truth, when this whole fanciful idea will actually become reality. And I'm about to meet these children who I've heard so much about and thought so much about for such a long time, and now I'm going to see them face to face, and I'm going to have

to make a decision. And I think it was that need to confront that that actually did freak me out a bit. At that point, I remember being pretty pretty worried. Yeah. Wow. From that point, we had to swim along the surface of this quite deep river for maybe fifty meters or so, and we came around the corner and we can then see the lights on where the kids are. And as soon as I saw the children, I started to immediately relax and just go into that work mode. Okay, here

are my patients. At last, we will say hello, the four Thai Navy seals are there, one of whom is a doctor, doctor Puck, who speaks quite good English. So I've got an English speaking colleague, which did so much for my nerves. I have to say. It was incredibly reassuring to meet that guy and be able to discuss the case, if you like, with him, like a corridor consultation.

And we parked all our diving gear opposite where the kids were, and then we approached and climbed out of the water and hiked up this very steep, muddy, slippery hill, which was the first opportunity for the kids to see us in action and have a very good laugh at our expense, because of course, these kids have been living on this hills, you know, for the last twelve thirteen days by then, and they've got bare feet and their skinny fit little kids, and they're just running up and

down the hill, whereas Craig and I, you know, middle aged men were slipping and sliding, falling on their faces, falling in the mud, and the kids are roaring with laughter. They thought it was hilarious. So that was a great icebreaker. Oh, nice comic relief, I love. Yeah. I think it was for all of us to be honest, and so we were able to have a bit of a laugh about that. And how did you how did you find the boys to be How did they seem physically, how did they

seem mentally? Well? My immediate sense was that they are not on death's door. That was the first thing. I mean, I didn't know what to expect. You know, what is a child, healthy child who goes into a cave and has no food for nine days? I mean, I didn't really have any experience of what that, yeah, duration fasting or some lie and all the angst. I didn't really have a feel for what they would do to a

child between the ages of eleven and sixteen. And they're already skinny kids, and you know, they did look very very thin to me. And some of them, you know, you see the pictures now, they just they're gaunt, their bones and sticking out of their face, and so they had they had lost a significant amount of weight. But on the other hand, they were all standing, most of

them were smiling, they were talking. I noticed a couple of them squabbling with each other, you know, having a bit of a punch, and I thought, well, they looked like normal kids, normal normal teenage boys, so they can't

be too bad. And I kind of went to doctor Puck in the first instance, and I, you know, we had a brief chat to introduce ourselves, and I have to say he seemed as relieved as I was to have another medical person in there, and so I just I asked him tell me about the children in terms from a medical point of view. You know, they haven't got any particular concerns. We sort of went through, system by system how they're lungs, how's their skin? Have they

got any diarrhea? All those sorts of things, And essentially it seemed like a couple of the kids who I could hear coughing, did have a bit of an early chest infection, which was of concern, but otherwise they were in pretty good shape. The environment itself was putred, there's no getting away from the smell was apalling. I mean, they'd been using this place as a toilet for the last nearly two weeks, and since food had been taken in there, of course that had changed things up even further.

But it seemed to me it was only a matter of time before their health really deteriorated rapidly. And was it doctor Park who shared the news with the boys about what the proposed plan was. So I had prepared myself by taking in a recipe which I got one of the time medical people outside the entrance to write for me, because I didn't know whether anyone would be

speaking English. So I gave doctor Park this piece of paper and said would you read this out to everyone in the room in tie And so he went step by step and in English. Basically what it said is that tomorrow we hope to return, and we plan to give each child a tablet which will make them feel a little bit sleepy and relaxed. We will dress them in diving gear. They will come down the hill and sit on doctor Harry's lap, and they will receive an

injection in each leg. The injections will make them fall asleep. We'll finish dressing them in the diving gear and then we'll swim them out of the cave whilst they're asleep. And that's pretty much it. And I think it says a lot about doctor Puck's professionalism that, of course this plan was as new to him as it was to the kids. Oh wow, yeah, that's right. And I'm watching his face and halfway through he sort of gives me

the sideways look, but he didn't say anything. He didn't throw himself to the ground screaming you're insane, Harris, You're insane, which is what I expected. It was very professional, very cool, and he just looked at me and then he kept reading. And then I was watching the kid's faces as he reached the end of the list, and I can tell you that all those children were just nodding as if it was the most normal thing they'd ever heard, you know, a couple of thumbs up again, no one collapsing in

hysterics or crying or anything like that. They were just like, yep, get us out of here. And I felt like at that point I could have said tomorrow we're coming in. There'll be a flying carpet, you'll all sit on it and we'll magic you out of the cave, and they would have had the same response, because I think after two weeks, I get the hell out of there. They they just wanted someone to take charge and get them out. So you went into the cave that day thinking okay,

I need to decide. What was there a specific moment when you when you found that clarity and you thought, okay, I'm in I'm going to do this. No, there wasn't. In fact, looking back, I can't remember that moment when I had decided to do this. And maybe in retrospect that happened on the aeroplane when I was flying over, because I was making notes, you know, reading up about all different drugs and you know, what will I use

for this if I go ahead? You know, I was ringing friends before I left Australia saying hey, if you were going to do this, what drugs would you use? Just to see if anyone at a different or better idea to mine. So maybe I had already decided at some level, because I don't remember a point where, you know, it just went yep, okay, I'll do it. It just became assumed knowledge at some point in my mind. Yeah. Is it fair to say that in some way it was It was not an affirmative decision that you were

doing it. It was actually just the absence of deciding not to do it. You know that inertia was carrying you forward and then suddenly find yourself in this position where you're actually executing on the job. Yeah, I think that's right. I think I kept looking for reasons not to do it. Yeah, And when the last one of those fell away, it was just left there on the table, and and I went, of course, I'm doing this. I probably always was. I don't know, but here I am.

Let's go. We'll be right back. With a slight change of plans. I'm talking with doctor Richard Harris or Harry, about the dangerous rescue mission he and others went on to save a boy's soccer team. The boys and their coach were trapped deep within a flooded cave full of narrow passageways and chambers. The plan was to innesthetize the boys, fit them with an oxygen mask, and then swim them

out while they were fully unconscious. Each rescue would take several hours, so they had to spread the mission out over three days. The plan was for Harry, the British diver Rick Stanton, and the rest of the team to rescue four kids each day, plus the coach. There were,

of course, a number of unknowns and ethical considerations. Yeah, this sort I've come to call the moral dilemmas of the cave rescue, and there's a few actually, And the first thing I vocalized to the British divers in one of our early planning meetings was that what if the first one or two kids die, which I think they will, we need a way of reassessing, regrouping and maybe changing something in the plan that had caused these deaths if there was a single point of failure, and so we

need to have a system in place where we can kind of close the loop on the plan for the first couple of kids. So that was the first thing that we had to think about, was how to manage those early deaths if they occurred. The second thing I said was, well, how many deaths will I be able to tolerate before I just cannot carry on. I mean, if on the first day, when I come out at the end of the day, one child died, or two children, or maybe all four, what am I going to do?

I don't think I can go back and repeat that if the first four children have died. And they said they were basically just going to pretty much drag me back in there to repeat the second and the third days and until all the children were out one way or the other. And we did talk about the fact that these kids had to come out and if they died, their bodies still had to be brought out for their parents.

So the British divers, whose job it was to take the boys all the way through the cave, they were very clear in their minds that if the boy drowned halfway through, they just had to keep going and take the child's body out of The moral dilemmas for me was if there were any fatalities on that first day, what was I going to say to the boys who remained in the cave when I went back on day two because it would be me that would be going back to see the kids and prepare them for the anesthesia.

And we decided that I was going to have to lie to the children because what I knew in my heart was there was no way I could drag a child, kicking and screaming, down to the water's edge and assault them with a syringeful of ketamine to anesthetize them to send them on their way. So I had to have their cooperation to be able to do that. And I don't know whether I would be capable of telling that lie to my patients, but that was what was in my mind that I would have to do if any

of the boys died. Yeah, just to like you said, keep morale high and at least increase the odds that whoever could be saved could be saved, right, I mean, what other options do you have? And the view of the big meeting that we had the night before the big rescue day was that, you know, even if we get a couple of these kids out alive, the mission

will be considered a success. Now that wasn't my view, but those children became my patients, and so I felt that every single one of their lives would be you know, if they were lost, it would be a complete disaster from my point of view, and yet at some level I expected that to happen to all of them. So can you tell us about what that first day's rescue

operation looked like. The plan was that myself and the four British divers who were going to be responsible for the children would swim all the way through to chamber nine, and then I would anesthetize each boy one at a time, and one of the British divers would help me finished dressing them in the diving gear, the full face mask, a cylinder of oxygen would be strapped to their chest, and whilst they were doing that, I'd do some final tests on the anesthetized boy, So I'd roll him over

and put his face in the water, and then pretty quickly lift him up again, just to make sure no water was getting into the mask. Repeat that for a bit longer and a bit longer again. And it's hard to describe how that felt, especially that first time I pushed a boy's face into the water as a human, let alone as a healthcare worker. That just felt wrong on so many levels, and the second thing we decided to do was to restrain the boys to make them into a kind of a nice neat package so they

would be easy to move through the cave. So to do that, we had already put cable ties or zip ties around the wrists of the boys, and then we just had to put their hands behind their back and clip them together with a carabine or climbing carabina, and then also wrap some rubber bungee cord around their ankles to tie their ankles together, and thus just making them into a like a dart shape which would be easy to move through the cave without their arms flailing around

and getting tangled up or knocked on and so forth. So we ended up calling it the Stanton Inert Patient Package the SIP, and I think that was part of our mental strategy to again make these things, these packages seem less like human beings but more like stuff we were moving through caves, which we were very familiar with doing. You know, we're often moving large bits of equipment or tubes full of food or provisions through underwater sections of caves.

So to make the children seem like they were a bit of equipment or something I think was a very good strategy for us to be able to disconnect a little bit from the you know, the horror of what we were doing. Yeah, so the first three boys, you're getting positive feedback from Rick that the boys are doing well. But the fourth boy, who's the final boy that you plan to rescue that day, his name is Nate. You

notice that he's not breathing properly. I noticed that night was one of the boys who had a bit of a cough, bit of a chest infection. And it's not unusual for children being anesthetized if they have chest infections, just to misbehave a bit, they sometimes hold their breath. There's some of the patients that give a a caesiologist's gray hairs, let's put it that way. And so I was a little bit concerned about this guy, but he

went off to sleep. His airways seemed fine, and we prepared him in the usual manner, and then I sent Rick on his way with this boy. And Rick had to swim down the canal on the surface for that fifty meters or so before he submerged for the first time under the rock, and as he got to the far end of the canal, he actually stopped and called back to me and said, Harry, this boy's barely breathing. He doesn't seem to be breathing as much as he

was when we left. And I said, just pause, Let's just count how many breaths you reckon in about a minute. So I waited and he said three, and I went, oh, that's not enough. And really there was nothing I could do for the boy anyway. If Rick brought him back to me. Every minute that he's in the water, he's getting colder, which was still a huge concern for me. Yes, we could drag him out of the water and wait till he wakes up a bit, but then we just have to be back where we started and repeat the

whole thing. So I said to Rick, just keep going, mate, and I'll come as soon as I can. And so Rick pushed on, and I quickly got my gear on and said a quick goodbye to doctor Puck said hopefully we'll see you tomorrow, because, of course, each day we didn't know whether we would be able to return if the rain came overnight. And as fast as I could, I followed Rick through the cave, and as I just was about to surface in Chamber eight, after this twenty

minute dive, I was reaching ahead. Of course, I can't see anything. I'm running my hand along the rope and I feel something in the water there and it felt like, honestly, it felt like a dead fish. I thought, what is that? And then I realized it was a foot, a child's foot underwater. And I didn't realize that I was actually at Chamber eight. I was still under water, so I thought, oh, no, that this is the child. The child has died and Rick has stopped to try and do something. But this

felt like a dead foot to me. But then a moment later, my head popped out of the water because you know, I was in chamber eight, and you know, I could see Craig and Rick there and the boy's legs were still just in the water, and that's what I had felt. So I said, you guys all right, and Rick and Craig both said, no, this kid's not breathing, and so I said, quick, drag him up. I'll get my gear off and I'll come up and have a look. So they dragged him up out of the water and

lay him on his side. I took my scuba tanks off and I sort of lay down behind the boy so I could put a hand in front of his mouth. I took the full face mask off for a moment because I couldn't hear any breathing through the regulator, and so I think we rolled him on his back. I had to look at his face. He looked really blue to me, and I thought, this is it. You know, this boy is either arrested or is about to arrest,

and he looks terrible. So I was just about to start to give him mouth to mouth when I thought, I'll just try and open his airway by pushing behind the corners of his jaw. What's called a jaw thrust, and that's very forceful maneuver which will open the airway, but it's also very stimulating. It's quite painful if you'd

do it someone who's not asleep. And that stimulus was enough to make the boy take a breath, and then very quickly he started breathing regularly, and in fact, very quickly after that he started to rouse and wriggle around, and so very shortly afterwards we had to give him another dose of ketamine to put him back to sleep again so that Rick could continue on his way. I think it was a combination of maybe he had a

bit too much ketamine for the first dose. He was very small, boy, it was cold, he had this chest infection, you know, a number of factors which just meant we got the dose a bit wrong probably or I got the dose a bit wrong and a bit of a

near miss on that first day. Yeah. So, so you dive out of the cave on day one and you're greeted by the news that all four rescues were ultimately successful, right, which which must feel astonishing, right given given that people were saying, look, even one life saved is a miracle. How do you How do you feel when you hear that news? I mean, do you feel reassurance? Are you or are you thinking this was just a fluke? You know, I can imagine a range of emotional responses to this. Yeah,

my first response was wow, that's amazing. My immediate response thereafterwards, oh my god, Now we've got to do it again. And then again. We had two more days of this, and that night I actually was filled with more dread and fear than I had felt the entire rescue up to that point, because for some reason I convinced myself that I don't know how we got away with this on day one, but day two, my instincts are going to be correct, and that these boys are going to

start dying. And what's more, I think if you have success early on, expectations have then changed. Yeah, and I imagine it's not just everyone else's expectations that have changed, it's your own expectations that have changed. Yeah. Well, you now know where the bar has been set, and you know that you have to continue performing. And I have to say by this stage also, there's a significant amount of fatigue and exhaustion starting to creep in because we're

getting very little sleep each night. We're lying in the hotel room listening to the rain on the roof, wondering if that's, you know, spelling the end of the rescue and the remaining children and the Thai Navy seals again will be doomed to perish in the cave. And that's

the way I was feeling. Knowing that what success can two expectations actually made me really really worried for the next day because I was still convinced that this should not be working, and I couldn't explain how it was working, to be honest, So what were those next two days, like I think, you know, it's just in a way, it was another day at the office, you know, we had a job to do. So yeah, I was okay again.

And then that night, of course, when I found that another four children had survived, well, then the danger becomes complacency, of course, and for D three. Yeah, and we had a big chat that night. We all sat around and the main talk was about let's not drop the ball tomorrow because we've still got five to go, and one of them you know, as the coach, and we need to get all five of them out and that's that's

one more than we've done before. So there was quite a bit of readjusting of the plan in terms of personnel and equipment and stuff to talk through that night. So walk me through that final that final day. You've got five people you need to rescue. There's also the tiny seals in their doctor puck, all of you divers have to leave. Yeah, to tell me about that final day. That third day, the rains had really started to build and it was a very sleepless night listening to the

really heavy rain on the roof of the hotels. So we were very worried about the state of the cave, and we felt that it was just on the verge of flooding again. So we made a bit of a pact between ourselves that as we walked past early in the cave, there are a couple of measuring sticks in

the water. We made a decision, I guess that if we saw those measuring sticks go up even by one centimeter, then we wouldn't continue into the cave that day because the concern was that a major flood pulse could come through the cave like flushing a toilet basically, and it would be very dangerous. So we were being very vigilant about the water levels and it wasn't falling, but it

didn't go up, so we were okay. Well, at the end of day three, right you're you're greeted by the news the twelve boys survived, the coach survived, the Tavy Seals are out. Doctor Puck, the tie doctor, who is also an evyl oh Man. He's unbelievable. He's a Navy Seal, he's an Airborne Special Forces, he's the King. Seems amazing. What what did it feel like to have accomplished this mission?

It's just extraordinary. As a lay person, it is extraordinary. Yeah, Chamber three in the cave is this big gymnasium sized chamber what what people are probably imagining caves look like. And all the divers congregated in this chamber and standing around just kind of like stunned mullets, just standing there staring at each other, smiling the stupid grins on their faces, but not really knowing what to say, and just sort

of letting this all sink in. And you know, a lot of the ties which cheering and clapping, and you know, I'm sure there are a few tiers there, but honestly, we were so exhausted and so stunned with this outcome.

Though I don't think anyone really talked very much. And one of the American guys seemed to produce this mysterious bottle of Jack Daniels, and so we all had a little one of those tiny little paper cups that you get given your tablets in we all had a little paper cup full of Jack Daniels, and yeah, it was just an extraordinary feeling without anyone really vocalizing very much.

And then we all started to head out of the cave, and my clear memory of that was this tribute to everyone who was coming out of the cave, by every volunteer who was on the ground lining up making a column that we had to walk through, and every single one of them wanting to shake your hand and slap you on the back. And the next day I remember waking up thinking, oh my god, my hand is so sore. It's like I remember that I've shaken hands with about a thousand people and had a clap on the back.

So that was exceptional. And everyone cheering and clapping and get to the end of that line and then you joined the queue on the end and do the same for the next coming out. It was That was absolutely wonderful. It was great, But there was no real celebration that night. Everyone was so tired. I think we had a couple of drinks and then I said, I got to go to bed. I'm finished. You had a chance to meet the kids in the hospital. Was that the following day? Yeah?

The next day? Oh wow, tell me about what that was like for them to have to meet you in more natural settings, for you to meet them in this environment. I couldn't leave Thailand without seeing these children. So we did this ward round, I suppose going around one by one. They're all in their beds, they're all eating food. They all looked so happy, they all looked incredibly well, they're

all awake and warm. And doctor Puck was in there, the coach was in there, the other Navy seals were all in their and yeah, we just went round one by one with an interpreter and just set alow. And you know, the kids were very shy now that it was kind of one on one and this big entourage was coming around. They looked just as stunned as we were,

I think, But it was very special. And a couple of the kids in particular just shaking hands with them, and I've got some really nice photographs from that moment. And then doctor Puck saying him in there, he actually got out of his bed and walked up to me and we just embraced and yeah, that was that was a very special moment. It was good. I can't help but wonder how things would have been for you had things turned out slightly differently and that the kids had

been severely injured or even died. The public's reaction, your own reaction would have been the complete opposite, right, even though it was the same decision making process. At play. I mean, we often assess the quality of our decisions based on their outcomes, not the actual quality of the decision making process. And so what that means is that chance can cut many ways, but we end up relying on chance to tell us, in turn how good the

decision was. So at the end of the day, even if it had been a failure, your plan you came up with with your team may actually still have been the best plan. I mean, that's the interesting piece of all this. But maybe the water temperature was two degrees colder that day, right, maybe the currents were just slightly different,

but it was still the best decision. I think about that a lot, and I think you've just summarized my views on it more eloquently than I could have myself, because you know, I'm quite cynical about some of the stuff that has happened to us subsequently. You know, the awards and the eccolades, and you know the label of hero and courage and all this stuff. And if even one of those children had died, the perception of us and the event would be wildly different, and certainly my

judgment of myself would also be wildly different. You know, I don't think i'd be talking to you today. So, yeah, what did you learn from the boys soccer team? What lessons do they leave you with? Harry? I remember going to see them in hospital and have continued to think about this to this day, about the resilience and courage that those children were able to show. And I know from talking to them subsequently and talking to the coach and the Navy seals, that they had their very dark moments.

Of course, you know, in the cave, after one day, two days, three days, how long can you maintain hope that you're ever going to see the outside world again? And so to sit there for nine days, essentially in the dark because they were being very careful to conserve what little light they had. They're permanently old and shivering. They're sitting on damp mud in shorts and a T shirt, no food at all, and I cannot imagine how you would maintain your morale under any circumstances for more than

a day or two. And people die in that situation.

They just literally give up hope and die. So there's something very special and unique about this group that were in that cave, and I don't know whether it's part of the Thai culture, that they just had total faith in their elders and in this case case the coach that he would keep them alive and protect them, or whether it's part of their Buddhist faith with the exception of one of the kids who was a Christian, or whether it's just the fact they're tough kids from the

country who have had a hard upbringing and they're used to hardship. And I certainly think there's something very important in that I have nothing for respect for them. And when people try and call the divers heroes in this, you know, I just remind them that the cave diving, whilst it might seem quite horrific for some people who are listening, for us, it's actually a great experience that

we enjoy doing. And if there's one thing perhaps I'm proud of for myself was to find the courage to proceed with the anesthetic plan, given that I didn't really expect it to work. But again, you know, to me, there was no choice because I didn't have the courage to walk away. So so I don't in any way feel like a hero, but I think those children and the coach are absolutely heroes, and the Thai Navy seals as well, you know, diving into that cave. You know

that that shows real courage. Yeah. Look, I mean I think a lot of people listening to this will will be surprised by that and find it so interesting that the nasty geologist who's a father himself, right, you have three kids, who is naturally going to feel protective of these boys, is not making the message of all this Why the hell were you guys in a cave days

before you knew you shouldn't have been? Right? And instead it is thank goodness these boys have built tough characters right, and have cultivated the kind of character that can help them persist through hard times. Because sure, lots of kids may not find themselves trapped in a Kiev, but we will all endure hardship. And building that big skin and

that kind of resilience is is so important and so adaptive. Look, we all have a challenge coming our way at some point in our life, you know, whether it's a personal health challenge or a career or a relationship issue or something you know outside of our control. You know, having helped those people who live in war zones and you know don't have food on the table or roof over their heads. But there's no doubt that we need to maintain a bit of toughness and resilience because you never

know when your personal challenges is coming. And that's why I continue to advocate for people to take risks and do things that are difficult and hard and uncomfortable. And you know, for most of us soft Westerners that means adventure sports or activities, or you know, putting yourself out there or challenging yourself in different ways, because I think you do need to continuously be challenged and life needs to be a bit hard from time to time to

maintain and breed resilience and courage. It doesn't matter what as long as it fills you with a small sense of dread and fear, you know, it's probably good for you. You know the old cliche what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. There is a huge amount of truth in that, I'm sure. Hey, thanks for listening. That's a wrap on this season of a slight Change of Plans. We'll be back soon with more episodes. In the meantime, you can

follow me on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker. You can get updates and a behind the scenes glimpse of a Slight Change and as always, if you have any ideas for future guests on the show, please let me know. See you soon. A Slight Change of Plans is created

written an executive produce by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change Family includes Tyler Green, our senior producer, Emily Rosteck our producer and fact checker, Jen Guera our senior editor, Ben Holliday, our sound engineer, and Mia LaBelle, our executive producer. A special thanks to Kishell Williams for her help on this episode. Louis Skara wrote our theme song and Ginger

Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there, including Nicole Morano, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Heather and Carly Niggliori, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at Doctor Maya Shunker. The coach actually came out first that day, and I didn't actually even realize that it was the coach until I started talking

to him. He was sitting on my lap like one of the other boys and I was joking around with him, and it was doctor Park who said said, Harry, you realized that's the coach. So I'm joking around, talking to him like his little boy, and yeah, he's just twenty five year old man sitting on my lap. So that was another cause for a good laugh.