We came to Colorado because 1) we might possibly want to move there, and 2) the leaves should be changing colors during the month we plan to stay. But we learned that Colorado has been experiencing a drought this year, and droughts stress the trees and cause the color changes to begin earlier than usual, so we might be a little late.
Fort Collins is at an elevation of 5000 feet. About an hour away is Estes Park, Colorado, which lies at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park and sits at 7500 feet. Estes Park is a very pretty town, and we drove up there because we heard that its fall colors were currently vibrant. Unfortunately, along the way we didn't see much fall color, mostly because the great majority of the trees are evergreens, not the deciduous kind whose leaves change color.
Estes Park really is an attractive community, with lots of restaurants and shops along its streets. But it's become a popular tourist area, so that traffic is pretty bad. And the leaves in town were disappointing - just starting to turn.
Estes Park is the site of the huge Stanley Hotel, which was the inspiration for The Shining. The story is that Stephen King and his wife stayed there one night in 1974 just before it was to close for the season, and they were the only guests and therefore had the run of the place, just as Jack Nicholson's family did in the movie.
That movie wasn't filmed there, but a later The Shining miniseries was.
After a good lunch in town we drove up into the Rocky Mountain State Park. We saw a herd of elk - a harem of about fifteen females and a male who stayed a short distance away. Impressive. At the suggestion of a ranger we drove up to a lake where some color was supposed to be dramatic, but it was a bust - just a few trees with yellow leaves surrounded by all those evergreens.
Back at our RV park the next day, I walked over to the campground office, which was some distance away, and experienced some significant shortness of breath. In fact the same thing had happened to me recently in Estes Park and even in the flatlands of Ogallala, Nebraska. And the preceding couple of weeks I had noticed some discomfort in my left lateral chest whenever I took a deep breath. Putting those symptoms together, I decided to seek professional help. Nancy looked up "urgent care near me", found one with all five-star ratings, and we drove there. When we walked in, it was a tiny place, with large signs promoting Botox injections, and a small sign on a door reading "Urgent care". We retreated and took away from that experience that when reading reviews of restaurants, hotels, or urgent care clinics, it's good to read the written reviews, not just go by the number of stars.
A further internet search took us to Associates in Family Medicine Walk-in Clinic nearby. Dr. Murphy examined me, had a chest X-ray taken, and thought I had pleurisy, probably viral in origin. I mentioned that I was concerned about the possibility of a pulmonary embolus (which can give pleuritic pain and shortness of breath), but he thought it unlikely. Still, he drew blood for a D-dimer test, which he said he disliked because it had so many false positives, and said he'd let me know the results. (D-dimer is a test for blood clots in the lungs or legs.)
The next afternoon, as Nancy and I were driving around, a nurse at the clinic called me and said that my D-dimer test was remarkably elevated and that I should go immediately - immediately - to a nearby hospital's emergency room to be checked out. She asked our location and directed us to UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital.
That ER was nowhere near as busy as Dominican Hospital's. I was taken back immediately and seen by a physician who examined me and because of the mildness of my symptoms also seemed to think it unlikely that I actually had suffered a pulmonary embolus, but ordered a CT scan of my chest with and without contrast. About an hour after that was done, the doc returned and said, "Well, you have multiple small clots in both lungs." Holy moley!
And so I got a heparin shot and was taken upstairs to room 5007 on the cardiac unit.
I stayed overnight for observation, was treated kindly and professionally, and was discharged the next day on the Xarelto that you see constantly advertised on television, with instructions to avoid prolonged sitting, and to follow up with my hometown physician. It had been a close call. I was happy with my treatment in the hospital, this episode was great blog material, but it was such a remarkable relief to get back to Nancy, Sophia, and Tammy Faye in our little portable home.
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