There is nothing like a close brush with death to make you realize that life is short. Live life to the fullest. We've heard it said a million times, but there is nothing like a heart attack to make you actually listen and take it in.It wasn't long before we realized that my husband was going to be okay. He spent 24 hours in a medically induced coma so they could perform a therapeutic hypothermia protocol after cardiac arrest. In English, research shows that lowering the body temperature of patients after a heart attack actually helps reduce any amount of brain damage that might be caused.
The doctors used Arctic Sun therapy, which kept his body at 32°C or 90°F for 24 hours. It took about 16 hours to get him to that temperature and another 16 hours to slowly "defrost" him safely. As soon as he was out of the coma, he could respond to commands (squeeze my hand) and recognize his friends that came to visit. He even tried to shake his friends hand when he came to visit one morning, but couldn't do it since he was restrained to prevent him from pulling out his ventilator.
He was released from the hospital on Friday afternoon, after being admitted after midnight Tuesday. He was back to work after a week of recovery at home. Christmas and New Years were a million times more meaningful knowing we had him with us.
It was December 31st when I thought of that cliche again - Life is Short. We've always felt that we've lived life to the fullest, but there's even more meaning to it now. 2015 was going to be an amazing year.
I called up my friend and said "Hey, haven't you always wanted to go to the Sundance Film Festival?" And within the hour, we had the cheapest tickets ever to Salt Lake City, UT for Sundance! Frontier Airlines had the most amazing fare. $20.15 one way in honor of the new year 2015. Of course the return fare was more, but after taxes the total round-trip fare between Phoenix and Salt Lake City was $89.15.
The rest of 2015 was full of fun adventures that I plan to blog all about in the coming days/weeks/months: San Diego, Catalina Island, houseboating on Lake Powell, whitewater rafting the Colorado River, Boston, Cape Cod, and most recently Tokyo and island hopping in Thailand. There are even more exciting trips in the works for 2016 like snowboarding in Vail, Breckenridge and Park City this winter, as well as hiking the Grand Canyon down to Havasupai Falls in the Spring.
But it's not all about trips everywhere. I'll also blog about my local trips and adventures. Subscribe to my blog if you want to hitch a ride!
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