Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Getting Back in the Groove


Bruno writes:

In early January I had noticed that I was breathless after ascending the two flights of stairs to my office at work.  At the time I attributed this to a very bad chest cold, and I was treated with a course of antibiotics.  It certainly made snowboarding / ski-ing harder work and I struggled to keep up with Sheri and our friends on the trails!

A month or so later when my cold was gone I still felt the same, so I made a return trip to see my family doctor.  I went for a series of tests and it was discovered that I had developed a heart arrhythmia know as "atrial flutter".  My resting heart rate was about 160-bpm and the blood was not being properly pumped around my body. This explained everything!

The short term treatment was drugs - beta-blockers to slow my heart and anticoagulants to prevent bold clots and a stroke.  And for the past month our usual winter activities have been severely curtailed.  Even going for a short walk down the road left me short of breath and it was hard to imagine going for a hike in the mountains or out for a few hours on my cross-country skis.  And our purchase of new snow-shoes seemed to be very optimistic!

Today I went to the hospital for a procedure known as "cardioversion".   Essentially the heart is restarted with an electric shock and in most cases normal rhythm is restored.  In about 50% of cases this is a long term fix, and I am hopeful that I will be in that half of the population!

At the moment I am recovering from the anesthetic and hoping that we can soon get back to a normal routine.  We are expecting a new puppy to arrive in our lives in mid-May, so this would be a great outcome.  Of course nothing is guaranteed, so we are taking life one day at a time and trying to be cautiously optimistic.


ECG traces of my 'before' and 'after' heart rate



Sunday, March 26, 2017

Homemade pizza for dinner tonight!

It's sure to be a feast!

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Nor'easter Fun in Connecticut and New Hampshire

Several weeks ago New England was blanketed with 1-2' of snow including the coastal areas all the way north to the mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.   While still in Connecticut we enjoyed some great skiing at Hewitt Farm in North Stonington. 


We enjoyed the snow again in New Hampshire.  We were amazed at the amount of snow when we arrived at the chalet!  It was also fun to have Sedona along to enjoy the snow.  Sedona stayed with us while our friends Mike and Denise spent time in Colorado. Although the temperatures were very mild over the weekend, we managed to get in some great XC skiing on the Jackson trails. It was fun sharing the trail with Sedona and we made lots of human and canine friends.


Snow at Hangman Hill
 
More snow at Hangman Hill

Even more snow in New Hampshire
 
 
Sedona on Jackson, NH XC Trails
 
Bruno on XC skies with views of Mt Washington in the background



Feline update

Chatra' and Hary' have been doing their best to survive the short days of winter over the past few weeks. This frequently involves curling up together, wedging themselves into tight spaces, and being cuddled by whoever is close by. Hopefully they can hang in there until the spring!

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Week of arts

Last week we enjoyed two events at local arts venues in Connecticut. It was a nice change of pace for us.

On Wednesday evening we saw Rosanne Cash at the Katherine Hepburn Center. She played an acoustic set with her husband and it was filmed for a local TV station.

On Sunday we saw the Banff Mountain Film tour at a local private college. This included 10 short independent films documenting various adventures on the water, snow and land.