Coming back and ready for 2018

Well, it's been a long time since I've made a post. Not sure exactly why, but I'm ready to get back into it. I have done plenty of trips since my last posts, but I just haven't written about them. I look forward to catching you up. 2017 was a tough year for me physically.

Since I was in high school, I would have major lower back muscle spasms at least a couple of times a year that would leave me flat on my back for a day or two. I had to be very careful at all times on how I reached for things and picked things up. If I stepped off the curb the wrong way or picked a piece of paper up at a strange angle, my back would be thrown into a spasm and it was extremely painful. This caused me to miss out on a lot of a family vacation to Florida in 2016. After that, I decided enough was enough and started moving towards surgery. In February of 2017, I had a microdiscectomy to relieve my back pain that had plagued me for 20 years or so. The surgery shaved bits off of the discs that were bulging out and pressing on nerves in my spine. Since that time, almost a year later, I have had very little, if any, back pain issues. I didn't know at that time, that would be the first of a few trips under the knife for me in 2017.

In June, my oldest son and I took a trip with my brother-in-law and my nephew to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), outside of Ely, Minnesota. We planned on a 5-day trip where we would canoe out of Ely up towards the Canadian border. I will post an entry on this trip soon. About the third day in, the weather had turned rainy and much colder. While stopped for a lunch break, I was walking around many of the granite outcroppings. I hit a patch of wet lichen, causing me to slip backwards. I dropped my right hand behind me to break my fall. I heard something pop. I, fortunately, didn't break anything. My back side was pretty sore, but I lost a lot of strength and some feeling in my right arm, my dominant arm. I had some extreme pain in my right shoulder, but had no idea of the extent of my injury. It was a tough couple more days paddling around and having to paddle out.

To add insult to injury, on the way out two days later, I was getting extremely hypothermic due to being wet and the air temperature hovering around 40 degrees and water temperatures around 40-50 degrees and a 20-30 mph wind. Losing balance and dexterity, I misjudged my exit from the canoe at a portage and fell out of the canoe, catching the gunnel underneath my right shoulder, causing me to lose some feeling and again lose more strength in my right arm. We eventually made it out of the BWCA and I was able to warm up, after about 4 hours of shivering. I still had no idea how bad my shoulder was, but I couldn't lift my arm much above waist high.

For the next several months, I couldn't lift anything more than a milk jug without pain. But I was able to regain mobility and feeling, so I sort of figured it would heal on it's own. Little did I know the pain in my shoulder would save my life.

In July, the family took a trip to southwestern Colorado, around Durango, Silverton and Ouray. This is one of our favorite areas. Again, I will post an entry on this great trip. While on this trip, the family did a two-night trip to the Blue Lakes outside of Telluride for a little backcountry camping and fly fishing. I had very little issues carrying a fully loaded pack at elevations up to near 12,000 feet. I had no idea that I was carrying a ticking time bomb.

In August, my wife and I were moving our daughter into her dorm at the University of Oklahoma for her freshman year. This is when I started to notice some extreme pain in my right shoulder, that seemed to radiate to my chest. I thought it was simply related to my injury I sustained while in the BWCA in June. So, I made an appointment with my Dr. to have him check me out and see how I could get my shoulder injury looked at. I had to wait a week because I had a trip to Bogota, Colombia coming up.

During my week in Bogota, I had hoped to do a hike to the Páramo outside Bogota. For those that have never been to Bogota, it is a city in Colombia that is at around 8,000 feet above sea level, 3,000 feet above Denver. The Páramo is a high alpine, tundra region in the Andes mountains, at around 11,000-13,000 feet. As much as I wanted to see this unique region, I was having difficulties walking down the streets of Bogota and ended up having to bail on a planned day trip.  I spent the day walking around Bogota and struggled walking more than 100 yards on the streets.

I flew back home and met with my Dr. who agreed that something was wrong with my shoulder, but based on the symptoms I was having, felt there was something else going on. He sent me immediately to the Emergency Department for a stress test. The cardiologist on staff that day recommended, instead, a cardiac cath procedure. This is where they would thread a tube through my wrist up, into my blood vessels near my heart and inject a dye of sorts that allows them to see arterial blockage. Through this procedure, it was determined that I had two areas of blockage in , one at 99% blockage and one at 75% of the left anterior descending artery. This was my ticking time bomb, and is commonly referred to as the "Widowmaker".

The cardiologist was able to insert two stents to open up the artery and prevent an eminent heart attack. What I thought was shoulder pain due to a shoulder injury was actually restricted blood flow causing my heart to work extra hard, and now, I am a cardiac patient for the rest of my life, hopefully, a very long life.

After the stents were in place, I was amazed at how well I felt. I had much more energy and was much more lucid. I had not realized how I was being dragged down prior to the surgery. I distinctly remember telling a friend a few years ago that I had noticed a drop off in my energy levels. I wrote it off to the fact that I was getting older. I now know that it was something much deeper.

However, I still had shoulder pain. So, I decided to see a shoulder specialist. I received multiple MRI's and xrays which came to the conclusion that I had two torn muscles in the rotator cuff that would continue to deteriorate over time and needed to be fixed, but due to the cardiac surgery in August, for which I am on blood thinners, I was not able to undergo surgery for a while. 

In December, my shoulder surgeon and cardiac surgeon came to an agreement that I could come off the blood thinners for 4 days, have the shoulder surgery and then go immediately back on them. The surgery was successful, but has an extremely long recovery time. I am hoping that by the end of March, I will be able to shoulder a pack and venture out for some more CanyonMan adventures. I have a planned trip for spring break to Beaver's Bend, Oklahoma for some fly fishing and hiking. I'm looking forward to that.

So, I'm glad to be back and look forward to catching back up on some of my families adventures over the past few years that I have not posted.