Just when I thought my foot pain was behind me and I was ready to start hiking again, something much more serious got in the way.
On Friday morning, January 24, I went to Hayward Kaiser for a treadmill test. I thought that this would be just another routine test, and how hard could it be to walk on a treadmill? Halfway through the test, the doctor suddenly told me to get off the treadmill and sit down. He said that he had seen something abnormal, and they immediately put me in a wheelchair and took me to the emergency room. A short time later, I was in an ambulance hooked up to monitors and IVs and speeding to Kaiser Santa Clara with lights and sirens going. In Santa Clara they did an angiogram, and found that a couple of my coronary arteries were 80% blocked, and that I would need bypass surgery.
After a couple of weeks in the hospital with all kinds of scary stuff happening, they let me go home to recuperate. It has now been three weeks since the surgery, and I'm beginning to feel like my normal self again. Most of the time it doesn't hurt -- only when I cough -- and I can go for short walks and do a lot of stuff as long as it doesn't involve lifting, pushing or pulling anything heavier than 10 lbs. I'm low on energy and take a lot of naps, and I'm not supposed to drive.
So it's going to be a long time until I can get back into any serious hiking, probably at least several months. In the meantime, I'm going to see what I can do about writing a few more stories about some of my memorable trips from long ago.
