Still Kicking...

 I am still here, trying to manage my time and energy.  

Most nights I sleep in bed, now, though still on my back.  My weight restrictions are gradually loosening, I think I'm up to 25 pounds now, still a long way away from walking the dogs - between the two of them they're about 110 pounds, and when they decide they want to sniff something over that way, they can pull me - and I'm not small.

Still doing cardiac rehab 3 times a week, from 2-3 pm.  I go in, get hooked up to a portable heart monitor, they take my blood pressure and blood sugars, then I spend 10 minutes walking.  I switch then to the recumbent bike, and do 20-25 minutes while they again take my blood pressure and remind me to hydrate.  Then weight training and stretching, final blood pressure and blood sugar checks, disconnect my monitor, and home I go to get back to work.  I take my lunch and an extra hour or so, with the approval of my supervisor, then back to work.  

The dogs seem to understand that I'm not quite 100% yet.  The truly irritating parts are the itching from the monitor stickers, which is really annoying because they have special stickers for people who are allergic to the adhesive or other things - and we still need to use a detergent that's free of perfumes and other unnecessary additives.  But I get itching on my ribs, which serves to remind me that I still have these four "bullet hole" type marks across my abdomen where the chest tubes were living after surgery.  

They're irritating, almost as much so as my recycle sites - they removed tissue from my left wrist and left shin, just below the knee.  So of course my left wrist hurts because it rests on things like the wrist rest when I type - so there's an inch and a half long scar that annoys me - I've got a good old sweat band on my wrist to pad that.  My shin, on the other hand, is one of those spots that I can't really do anything about.  It's about two inches long, triangular, almost an inch wide at the bottom.  I have no idea how deep they went, the spot on my shin is right where my compression sock tents to sit, so that's no fun.

Other than that, I'm doing OK.  The exercise bike I'd planned to buy as a Christmas Present for us has arrived, I need to clear some space in my office, and then see if I need to address any concerns.  The reviews my wife read were all pretty favorable, the only complaint they had was that the bike was a little unstable.  According to the details on the bike, it was 22 inches wide.  If that wasn't the feet under the bike, I've put a fair amount of brainwork into building a sort of stable base for it.  Worst-worst case scenario will be starting with a piece of 3/4" plywood that's two feed wide by four feet long.  I'll most likely cut it down to a foot wide, then reinforce a sort of channel where the metal tube that appears to be the base of this thing fits in between a couple of pieces of wood - most likely a 2x3 to get me above the pipe base, which I'll then fasten down with some one-inch wide metal reinforcement straps about 8" long.  I figure a four-foot wide base will definitely provide plenty of stability and I'll be good to go.  

I'm planning on starting slow and easy, and working my way up.  I want to shoot for somewhere between 10 and 20 miles a day - I'm going to set some specific time goals, to start with, so I work on the bike at least a half hour, up to an hour, a day, and then i want to set a mileage goal to keep me moving.  I figure it should help.

So that's where I am.  Still here, still kicking, still trying to get back to a semi-functional human - maybe even better than I was.  Sure would be nice to be able to walk around places and not need to stop and catch my breath regularly.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And Then This Putz...

 Well, I'm pretty worked up about quite a few things lately, as one might expect.   However, this putz hit the ball right out of the park - foul ball, that is. For the record, here's the link to the article on CNN : https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/03/us/parades-independence-day-july-4-ijdgi-cec/index.html .  This poor, sad fellow has never had fun at a parade. Yeah, I get it.  I'm warped.  When I was a little kid, the memories are still there of hopping onto the back gate of the station wagon with my dad, and watching the parade pass by.  Back in those days, when the American Flag passed, you got your ass up, your hat came off, and you stood at attention.  Every damned time.   But back then it was usually not only showing respect for the flag, but also showing respect for those who carried it.  Often they were older men who had been soldiers.  Most of the early parades I remember are from the late 1960s into the early 1970s.  ...
Read more

Both Sides Now...

It sure seems a very long time ago, but in the grander scale of time, not so long.  Longer than some lifetimes, shorter than others.   But back in the 1970s, my folk had a piano teacher come in for all of us to take lessons.  I think we each got maybe 15 minutes with her, and somehow we were all expected to practice our lessons during the rest of the week.  Mind you, I didn't know many other families with a baby grand piano.  In fact, we were the only one I knew of.  We had an upright piano we'd gotten before we moved into the house on the river, but the second summer I'd gone to summer camp, probably 1976, late July, my folks made a deal.  I came home from camp and the upright piano was out of the corner of the living room, replaced with this monster baby grand.   It played well enough, for all I knew.  I started out with a lot of finger exercises and scales, and then the dime dropped.  I figured out how to connect my piano le...
Read more

Stumbling Along...

Another OFIM (TM Bob Walder), as it tends to go in my world. Slept horribly last night, and woke up at 4:44 am.  The alarm goes off at 5:45 am for me, so I get a few minutes to sit here, get the eyes to blink in unison, attempt to ease into the day by discovering what, if anything, happened overnight, and then prepare for the day.  By about 6:15 I get the shoes on, pull on my sweatshirt, grab my mug, and encourage the dogs to head upstairs with me.  Once I hit the first landing, I divert to the freezer in the garage, grab breakfast, and then consider if I need additional cold caffeine beverages in the fridge upstairs, then hit the last six steps.   Once I'm upstairs, I unload my stuff onto the kitchen stove, and put food in Cheyanne's bowl, by the time that is complete, she's usually right behind me.  I remove the baby gate blocking off the kitchen - as puppies are well-known connoisseurs of kitchen garbage.  Freyja has a predilection for paper towels ...
Read more