Still in Colorado

May 20th, 2023

I was supposed to be up in Wyoming by now, somewhere along the North Platte River. I needed somewhere to camp prior to the holiday weekend, after which my destination was to be Grand Teton National Park. Alas, this did not happen.

I visited with my son near Boulder for 4 days, after which I had an appointment with a new cardiologist. The appointment was Tuesday, May 16th. It changed everything. I previously wrote in “Beyond the Peak”, posted February 6th, about my stay at the hospital in Palm Springs. There I was supposed to have had a “tiny” heart attack and had 3 stents placed. The first thing the new cardiologist stated was that everything I had been told there was incorrect.

He told me it is doubtful that I had a heart attack. Based on my activities, where I had hiked during the summer and fall, the elevation, and distance, my heart would be too strong for an attack. He said most likely the helicopter transport was unnecessary. Possible the stents were not needed either. Rather, he said that I had atrial fibrillation and just needed treatment for that. In addition, I was prescribed the drug, Amiodarone. This is a very strong drug with high toxicity and is not recommended for long term use (a week and a half or less). I was given it for 3 months with an additional 6 months of refills.

The first thing the doctor did was order me off the drug, tapering dosage over the following week. He then told me that what I needed was an ablation procedure to deal with the fibrillation. While I could live with it, at any time I could experience shortness of breath or worse, that would require me to find a hospital whatever my location. As I am traveling, that could be problematic. As an alternative, I could stay for tests in Colorado, have the procedure, and be back to a relatively normal life.

So, I was scheduled for tests and a follow-up appointment. I had to find somewhere to camp for a week and a half in the Boulder area. There is no dispersed (free) camping along the front range, and it is too cold to go up into the mountains this early in the springs. So, I had to scramble to find a place to hold up. I found a Colorado state park that had open sites during the week day, but not the weekends. I booked the first 3 days, hoping that something opened up on the weekend. It has been raining here a lot with record rainfall amounts. There were cancellations, so I got a different site for the weekend and then back to the original for the following 5 weekdays. The same thing happened this weekend, but again had to move to different site. Finally, this next week it will be back again to the original site. Moving so often is not fun, but at least the moves were only a couple of hundred yards or so.

Meanwhile, I did get a chance to visit Estes Park for a day. The drive up the Big Thompson Canyon was nice as usual. I decided to drive up to Bear Lake, beyond town, in Rocky Mountain National Park. There, the trails were still snow covered. I saw a good number of elk and mule deer as well as a bald eagle. I was slightly delayed in town, as a small herd of elk decided to cross main street from the town square over to the River Walk. They were well behaved as they crossed at a walk, single file at the crosswalk.

I walked the length of the main street and back before heading back out of the mountains. At this “off season”, there were very few people around and most of the shops were closed until later in May. My favorite Big Horn restaurant was open. I stopped for brunch and met a very nice young waitress who was here on a Visa from Macedonia. It was very interesting to talk to her, comparing cost of living here in the U.S. versus eastern Europe.

My follow-up cardiologist appointment is Monday. That is now in question, as additional lab tests have been ordered. My next plan for heading north to Wyoming was this Wednesday. I am not sure that will happen.

Crossing my fingers…