June 16: In Stow at Judy’s for my rehab.

June 15: Not as great as a night’s sleep as the previous night, but pretty decent nonetheless in that I’m getting more comfortable in lying on my side to sleep. I have a feeling, at least I’m hoping, that this intro paragraphs on my night’s sleep will be smaller and smaller until they just disappear!

Chest also feeling a bit better each and every day with respect to the pain factor. Now as I mentioned I am feeling quite stiff first thing in the morning with the chest area, but it’s far better than that crippling chest pain I experienced for the first week and a half. 

So my morning routine as of late has been to wake up with a cup, my one and only cup, of coffee while I listen to sports talk or watch the morning news on TV. Then I work for several hours, followed by breakfast. The new go-to breakfast, and a much healthier version than my breakfasts of years gone by, is a big bowl of Raison Brand cereal with non-sweet almond milk. Judy’s been pretty instrumental in orchestrating my change in breakfast habits. 

You see I used to be an eggs, sausage and bacon guy! HAD to have meat for breakfast. I’d look with disgust at cereal breakfasts in the past. No way! “Fill me up with meat and cholesterol,” was my morning motto. Well, despite the fact that my blood work has been ideal, I’m still not willing to go back to my old habits. I feel with these new pipes I owe it to myself to really change my eating habits. Shit, anything to keep these new “gas lines” as new as possible as long as possible. 

So I’m now eating the things for breakfast that I used to detest. In addition to the Raison Brand, I’m eating Steel Cut Oats with sweet almond milk and raisons, another of Judy’s breakfast favorites. Funny, but I used to love going to these breakfast buffets where I’d eat a plate of scrambled eggs, a pile of sausage about 6 inches high, bacon, sausage gravy, I mean the whole freaking shot. And of course I was of the opinion that a good 3-4 hour ride would just wash the shit right out of my system like a toilet flushing! And the last thing I’d eat at the buffet, well, let me clarify that…what I would NOT eat at the buffet was fruit and hot and cold cereals. 

I can only shake my head at my stubbornness. Now I do have to say that at this point I do not know if diet had a thing to do with my coronary artery issues. At first glance, judging by my blood work, it did not. BUT…who really knows for sure. I mean the cardiologists have told me that genetics and stress were likely the main culprits here. But there is that “BUT” they always insert in there. It goes like this, “but we can’t say for sure if the other factors didn’t enter into this.” I don’t like that “BUT”. Kind of makes me think I’d better clean up some other areas in my life to make sure this will be the one and only open heart surgery I’ll ever undergo. Just cannot take a chance with that “BUT”. This despite the fact that my blood work is pretty damned good. 

Got my walk in today, where I went just one power line length further than yesterday. And again, I ended up with exactly 1.5 hrs in the walk despite the longer distance. I really feel like I’m keeping it mellow with respect to the intensity level. I mean I bloody shuffle when I do any hill. I try purposely to keep the pace low and slow yet I’m still walking just a tad faster. And I’m feeling way less tired after my walks to the point to where I can just come back from the walk and go straight to the computer to work for several hours. Before, like in the first two weeks, hell after a walk I had to nap for a couple hours just to recover. 

So Judy took my home where I would be staying the night tonight. This because I have my first big cardiologist appt. tomorrow in Cleveland. Since Judy has a doc appt. also tomorrow she cannot take me. Kim’s boyfriend Mike will take me first thing in the morning to the Clev. Clinic Main campus where I first have an echo, then an EKG, then I meet with the cardiologist who will be overseeing my rehab and recovery. I’ve met the guy already pre-op. and I really like him. He’s sports oriented and right up my tree. He’s already told my sister to have me “chill” for the first 4 weeks so I don’t screw up my sternum and grafts from healing properly - this because Kim directed him to my American Dirt website, where he got a small picture of my MO. He had interviewed me back the day before my surgery, asking me all about my background, asking for my PR’s in all my racing, asking me about my training, and asking me about my American Dirt gig. So the guy knows where I was at, and more importantly he has an idea of where I want to get back to. 

Anyway, I’ll really anxious to find out where I’m at tomorrow in the rehab process, and what the next step will be. I’ve got like two small pages of questions for him, and I’m hoping he does not scold me for my walking volume. My questions range from diet, to exercise, to actually showing me what arteries were bypassed, to my wondering if I have any damage to my heart tissue from the “cardiac incident” that they said I had back on May 11th. I mean I have a load of questions ready for him. 

Went to bed early really anxious for the following morning.