Don't worry, be happy!

I try to keep a happy face most of the time, no matter what's swirling on around me... no one wants to hear me whine incessantly about the dark side of life.  But it's been a tough year here at the Stevens' household. 

Last August my heart decided to stop working, technical term... Left sinus syndrome... and I ended up in the hospital in Cortez. then Durango instead of in the Cliff Dwellings at Mesa Verde with my family.  Upshot? a pacemaker.

In October Larry had a serious attack of atrial fibrillation while backpacking in the Grand Canyon. Upshot?  He had to be airlifted out.  Since then he's had several attacks, twice while bike riding and for a while rather frequently -one preventing him from is 14teener (hike up a 14,000 high mountain) ... but he's learning to manage it.

In November, I got a very nasty cold over Thanksgiving, that turned into bronchitis, then in December it returned and I ended up being hospitalized with pneumonia.

We skipped along ok till then until July when my old childhood nemesis returned... asthma.  Since I hadn't had asthma symptoms for years and since it appeared as a full blown asthma attack not as a complication of a cold I didn't recognize it, I found myself collapsing, unable to catch my breath and thinking it must be my heart.  The second attack  put me in the hospital.  They didn't recognize it either... because of my heart.  It kept hogging the attention.  Thankfully my nurse practitioner at home said, wait... there's nothing wrong with your heart, what about... asthma?

We have decided that we cannot just give up and die at 63 and 65 respectively.  We've got to climb out of this morass and get on with living the way we want to live.  So...

We went out and bought a travel trailer.  We're going to explore the U.S. from top to bottom. Canada too We've seen a lot of our continent, but there's more to see and some to see a lot more than the fast passes through we made the first time.  Or that deserve a second in depth look.

We're off to Argentina and Chile in November.  We have a burning desire to see the world. And there's places we haven't been, and therefore need to go.

There.  I've whined my whine, we will go on from here.  Travelling the road of life, maybe a bit more slowly, maybe a bit more cautiously... ignoring real health issues is foolhardy, but you'll find us somewhere out there immersing ourselves in the parts of the world we still haven't seen, getting to know our small, lovely planet.