What Happened on Ross Edgley's Loch Ness Swim?

Ross Edgley picked up cellulitis on a 56-hour nonstop swim of Loch Ness. The water was about four degrees, barely above freezing. He did not stop for sleep. No one could touch him, and he could not touch the boat.

Andrew Huberman asked what cellulitis is. Ross Edgley called it a skin infection. Fresh water and a chafing wetsuit drove the rub so deep that the skin turned infected, and he said the infection can be fatal if it reaches the lymph nodes or the bloodstream. Toward the end he had hypothermia. He was shaking from the inside, in his bones, while his skin was on fire from the cellulitis.

The injuries recalibrated his sense of pain. Swimming around Iceland, Ross Edgley would get very cold, look at wounds around his neck, and decide he was still okay because the cold was not as bad as Loch Ness and the wounds did not smell infected. Nietzsche's warning about gazing into the abyss ran through his head while he swam Loch Ness.