Better things to do? Sort of, but clot mysteries continue

 At the entrance to a slot canyon near Boulder, Utah.

I received an e-mail lately asking if I had found better things to do than update this blood clot blog. The answer is that I have found better things to do than sit around worrying about the mysteries of my blood, but that doesn't mean the mysteries have gone away.

We went to Las Vegas, Nev., at the end of June enroute to my niece's wedding in Boulder, Utah. We combined that with a visit to Bryce Canyon National Park, where I was able to complete a three- to four-mile hike down into the canyon and then back up on a trail called Wall Street. And if you think the New York version of Wall Street is crooked, you should see the Utah entry -- 700 feet of elevation gain in switchback after switchback. But I made it. Slowly but steadily, and let's stop right now and thank Erwin Rieger and the Mazamas Mountaineering Club of Portland, Ore., for teaching me the mountain rest step back in 1971. That saved me on Wall Street. Old ladies and little kids passed me. Snails lapped me, but I got out of that canyon without the helicopter rescue my wife predicted.

Since then, there have been house guests and health problems of other friends and family to deal with, time at the  cabin and lots of catching up on other aspects of our lives.

I'm still wearing my compression hose (not with hiking shorts), elevating my leg as needed and trying to walk the clots away. I head back to the hematologist next week to try out a medicine that is successful in one in three or four patients in treating lupus anticoagulant, which I have tested positive for twice. So the blood mysteries continue.

I'll try to be a better correspondent now that things have quieted down (I hope).