I lived in Phoenix for 38 years - an altitude of about 1,086 ft. When I moved up here to the mountains- an altitude of 5700 ft. and the neighboring town of 6200 ft. it took me months to adjust.
I've lived here for 16 years. You wouldn't think it would mess with me that much.
And a very good one at that.
I have come to realize this but I am still very careful. I saw a post where a person abused another person who was asking for help and an Administrator came to the defense of the poster. That made me really happy.
I can relate. So much.
From what I've read, you're pretty much right. Not thicken as in taking a consistency of molasses, but your marrow starts producing a lot more red blood cells so there ends up being a lot more red blood cells in the same volume of blood.
I'm so tired today. I woke up at around 6:30 (I think) with my foot cramping up horribly. I finally got it to stop so I could go back to bed, only to be re-awakened an hour later by more foot cramps! It was so early that Jasmine wasn't even interested in breakfast yet, just sleeping. And now I'm afraid to try to go back to bed again; the muscles in that foot are already sore from the earlier incidents. And I'm cold. Wearing a warm sweater, polar fleece pants, and long socks, but my metabolism just isn't ready to be awake. I think I'd better take a hot shower. It would at least warm me up, and maybe it will soothe those muscles enough to make it safe to nap. Or maybe I should pull a couple of blankets off the bed and bring those and my neck pillow and sleep mask out here to the living room so I can nap sitting up, with proper support under the feet... Yes, that ought to do it, especially if I microwave my rice pad to put under my feet. 
. They're all displayed out front now. It smells soooo good but it's too early to buy trees and holiday decorations and stuff.
Yeah, buy one now and it'll be a firetrap by Christmas. There's no way that I've found to not have it dry completely out for an entire month or more.The local independent grocery store across the street got their shipment of fresh holiday trees overnight
Margret
someone told me to try seltzer water with Quinine. I didn't find it helped right away but a few hours later my leg cramps finally went away. The person who told me about this is a workout buff. Also can you eat sweet potatoes or bananas for potassium?
People don't realize that not only is it hard to breathe at first, but the sun is brutal at these elevations.The strange thing is that I never had any obvious altitude sickness after moving back to Denver after a year in California; no shortness of breath or anything like that. The only obvious symptom was depression, and then I got the anemia diagnosis.
I was once on top of Pikes Peak, near Colorado Springs. Altitude 14,115 feet. (It was a trek to the summit of Pikes Peak that inspired Katherine Lee Bates to write the poem that became the lyrics of "America the Beautiful.") I don't care if you are acclimatized to Denver's altitude, you're going to be short of breath at over 14,000 feet, and I was, so I went into the little café to sit at the counter, get a snack, and catch my breath. An elderly woman sat down next to me and commented about how hard it was to breathe at this altitude, and our waitress (who appeared to be a high school student hired for the summer, which is the only time the road to the summit is open) commented that you get used to it fairly quickly -- it only took her a week or two. I asked the woman where she was from, and she said Los Angeles, i.e. sea level. Then I asked the girl where she was from, being pretty sure I already knew the answer. Sure enough, Colorado Springs, altitude approximately 6,000 feet. I pointed out that, in the first place neither one of us was going to be here a week or two to acclimatize, and that it takes a person from sea level a lot longer to acclimatize to over 14,000 feet that it takes a person from 6,000 feet. A week or two might do it for me, since I'm from the Denver area (still lower than Colorado Springs) but not only wouldn't it be long enough for a person from sea level, it might actually be dangerous for her to try without first acclimatizing to the high planes at the foot of the Rockies. (And I thought, but did not say, "especially at her age.") Then I told the woman that it was very important to make sure she exhaled fully with each breath and that she needed to drink plenty of water the entire time she was visiting Colorado, since dehydration is a common problem for lowlanders who come here.
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Margret
