St Vrain River Greenway

 

Where I get to walk.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtSqZTkV4kQ

 

 

I wonder

 

I wonder if some things we don’t think of as related really are.  As I get older, plaque accumulates on my teeth more than it used to.  I accumulate plaque in the arteries of my heart.  I wonder if those two kinds of plaque are related, or if the proclivity to form one kind inclines a person to accumulate the other as well.

 

I’m told I have Small Vessel Disease in my heart.  It’s not so much a clogging of the small blood vessels, but a constriction.  Sometimes the small blood vessels constrict and restrict flow when they should be doing the opposite.  Years ago, while flyfishing, I discovered that my fingers are over-sensitive to cold.  In response to cold, my body doesn’t pump more blood through my fingers to warm them, it over-reacts the other direction and completely shuts off blood flow, so my fingers first go numb, then turn pallid (fish-belly white), then turn blue-black.  It looks like I’ve lost them to frostbite, and it’s disturbing, but when I re-warm them, the normal color returns.  It’s called Raynaud’s Syndrome.  I wonder if the small vessel conditions in my hands and heart are related.

 

Have you ever watched a field of sunflowers?  The flower heads turn to follow the sun.  By evening they are all pointed west.  On Saturday morning we went birding and drove past a field of sunflowers before the sun had hit it yet.  All the flower heads were pointed east.  So I wonder: Do sunflowers anticipate?  When the day is done and they’re all pointed west, do they remember that the sun is going to come up in the east the next morning, so turn themselves overnight to be ready for it?  Or do they spend the night pointed west, then discover at sunrise the next day that the sun is in the east and they need to turn to meet it?

 

I wonder.

 

 

When it's time to turn around

I always want to walk to the next bend in the trail, or top of the next hill, to see what I didn’t hike to. Know what? There’s an app for that!

With the My Tracks app, I can see without going there. There is a map of where I am and where I’ve been.


There are stats for how far I’ve walked and how long I’ve been out.


There is even a plot of speed versus altitude.


Of course, I still hike to the top of the next hill before I turn around, but sometimes I get to pick out things on the map that I didn’t know were there and adjust my hike. If there is ever a question about which way to go to get back to where I started(not that that would ever happen), it’s right there. I love this app!

I was tagged

While I was unconscious at the hospital.

I think I woke up with gang tats. They don’t wash off.

Wow. We didn't expect that!

 

First, let me report that we’re home and in pretty good shape, considering.

 

We were at the Cardiologist’s Office by 9am yesterday.  They had us to the Heart Lab by 10.  Dr. Holland was already there operating on somebody else.  They just dropped me into the queue.  The queue was longer than expected.  Becky, Matt, Judy and I waited 5 hours in the pre-op room.  I think it was a longer wait for everyone else than for me.  As far as I know, I was the only one on Valium.

 

So the Cardiologist agreed that yes, it’s time to go into the heart again.  Before I went in, the entire conversation was about Plavix.  There are different treatment options, depending on which arteries are clogged and where they’re clogged.  I’ve voiced that I’m not sure I could survive another year on Plavix.  Plavix seems to want to treat my brain as much as my heart and I’m concerned it will change my brain irreparably.  Anyway, we talked about bare metal stents, medicated stents, and bypass surgery.  Bare metal stents only require Plavix for a month, but they don’t stay open as long as medicated stents.  Medicated stents require Plavix for a year.  If they crack my chest and tag bypasses onto the outside of my heart, I won’t have to take Plavix at all.  So in I go to the cath-lab.  Out I come 40 minutes later, no new stents and no new blockages in my heart.  That’s the part we never considered, that I would have no new blockages.  That changes everything!

 

First, it means that all the nutritional supplements I’ve been taking for the last year might actually be having a positive effect on my heart.  They may have stopped the plaque formation.  That is great news, because it takes Statin drugs (which I can’t tolerate) out of the picture.  I don’t need to take a Statin drug to lower my cholesterol more aggressively if I’m not accumulating plaque.  Second, it takes Plavix out of the picture.  I won’t have to whine for another year about how Plavix makes me feel.

 

Of course we still have to deal with the symptoms that drove us to the cardiologist this time around, but it’s nice to know they were not the result of a clog in a major artery, and nice to know that if I need to, I can take another Nitro-glycerin for relief.

 

The diagnosis is indirect, but if I’m having the symptoms and Nitro relieves them, and there are no new major artery blockages, then I’ve probably got Small-artery disease which is interfering with the blood flow.  Small-artery disease might be annoying and decrease my exercise capacity, but it doesn’t lead to heart attacks and sudden death like Major-artery disease does, so that’s a giant improvement.  If the quick-release Nitro-glycerin pills work, there are slow release forms that should work as well.  If I’m not having side-effect troubles with Nitro-glycerin, there is a good chance I won’t have them with slower release forms either.

 

All this is a surprise; new information to digest, and there are still issues to deal with, but all-in-all, I consider this to be a very good surprise.

 

 

It's hard not knowing

 

We figure my heart is going to need some more work, but when is it time?  Don’t want to sound the alarm too soon and go through the whole Cath-Lab experience before we need to.  Don’t want to wait just a little bit too long and miss an opportunity to fix something before it’s too late.

 

Been running a little low on energy.  I still walk two or three miles every day, sometimes as much as five miles.  It doesn’t feel all that good though.  A little light-headed.  A little short of breath.  It’s subtle.  No absolutely clear indication it’s time to do something.  It’s only been a year since the last procedure.  That’s a little too soon, isn’t it?

 

I tried something different today.  After hiking a mile or two, I took a nitro-glycerine.  If there is nothing going on, I should get a head-rush from the pill, but otherwise, nothing much should happen.  Wow.  What a difference!  I forgot how good it feels to feel good.  The walk was suddenly fun.  I tried running.  Haven’t done that in weeks.  That worked too.  Good news/bad news.  It’s good to feel so good, but it also suggests it’s time to see the cardiologist.

 

We were already scheduled to see Dr Holland at the end of the month.  We called his office and they have an opening tomorrow.  Lots to do to get ready for that.  Relocate the coach closer to Boulder.  On the way, get the front tires fixed on the coach.  That went very well.  They couldn’t have been nicer at Wingfoot Tires in Denver.  We were going to be at St Vrain State Park starting Thursday anyway.  They got us in two days early.  Everyone is so helpful.

 

The coach is all set up to camp here for a week.  We’re close to Community Hospital in Boulder.  The dogs have a date tomorrow morning at Happy Hounds in Longmont to stay as long as necessary.  We’ll have a visit with the cardiologist and see what to do next.  It might involve the Cath-Lab again.  We’re as ready as we can be.

 

Judy’s email is Judy@TaylorRoth.com.  You can text her at 303-666-6018 if you want.  She’ll be the one who is still conscious and coherent (I think).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It lives!

The motorhome lives and breathes, and moves.


We get to choose where we want to be.


We're at Chatfield State Park.