No Hill for Granted

Thirty-three days ago, I almost died.

If you're wondering where I've been, or even if you haven't, here I am.

On February 15th, I began to have severe back pain.

Thinking that it was just a kidney stone or infection, I tried to go to bed. By bed time, I was in agony. By midnight, I was in trouble. After passing out going down the stairs, in the dark, alone, I made it down stairs and huddled with a blanket. My teeth were chattering from the pain being so bad. But worse, I couldn't breathe.

Now I'm sure some of you that know me would be shocked to hear that I argued not to go to the Emergency Room. /sarcasm but yes its true. By this time, I was gasping for air.

An hour later I'd be told that A. I might have leukemia (I didn't) B. I have pneumonia (I didn't) and C. I have a grapefruit sized pulmonary embolism in my left lung (I did).

An ambulance took me to an actual hospital where I spent a good bit of time.

It is hard to go from someone crushing mountains, capable of doing 20 mile/5000-7500 AEG days in the mountains to not be able to walk five feet, but I couldn't. The only reason I could walk that far was because I didn't want a catheter. Somehow that was worse.

But I didn't create this post for sympathy or for anything like that. I just wanted to share what I learned. At first, it was hard to see the whole everything happens for a reason gag. I mean, I was on a personal roll with my outdoor activities, it was the dawn of spring hiking season and it all just went to crap in a hurry. Everyone says that everything happens for a reason but does anyone really believe it.

Almost dying, and spending time in a hospital bed surrounded by others on your wing that were on a proverbial banana peel tends to do that to you however.

This sounds pithy, but I have a hard time believing that people care about me. Always have, probably always will. It's probably uber narcissistic but it helped to truly understand that people cared about me, outside of just my family. At least I'm honest. But not for the FB likes and comments, just to know that people care about you means something.

It also brought me closer to my wife. She was so very helpful during this time. Helping me when I couldn't walk 5 feet. Basically being there for me.

But this is an outdoor blog.

See... I'd already began falling into a trap. I was getting to the point that just being outdoors wasn't enough. The same things I'd talked about, everything can be rad, adventures are what you make of them, I'd been forsaking. If a mountain wasn't 5,000 feet (OK this IS Arizona) it wasn't worth climbing, wasn't worth my time. I'd taken to referring to hikes as baby hikes or noob hikes etc. Basically, I was becoming an outdoor achievement snob.

And I didn't like myself for it very much. Three weeks ago, after I'd gotten home, I stared out of my window looking at my home peak (2,448 whopping feet). The realization at that time, that I couldn't even walk from my couch to the bathroom without being exhausted was oddly helpful to me in gaining valuable perspective.

Now, I see even hills and mountains that 3 months ago I'd have climbed blindfolded as valuable again. Worth protecting, worth telling others about. I don't yearn so much for tall peaks, thru hikes, and foreign hikes. Because just going on A hike right now sounds pretty damn good. Being alive sounds pretty good.

Now I know that soon, I'll be pushing it, achieving and doing 'what I do' as I always say. But now, I don't need to. I don't have to. And that's just fine.