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Monday, May 23. Still in Lakewood at my sister’s house. 


Sunday, May 22. Man, talk about feeling sore and stiff when you get up in the morning. Well, post-opp open heart surgery really gives this a whole new meaning that. Just the act of actually getting up, that’s a bloody challenge. See, I can only exert a specific amount of push-pull pressure on my chest since its needing about 6 wks to really heal properly, so I have to kind of scoot my arse to the right spot to where I can lop a leg down onto the floor, then do the same with the second leg, then use my abs and a bit of a push or pull with my hands to finally sit up. Feels like my chest is going to pull apart no matter what. But I really have to minimize that push or pull component. TG I’ve been so fastidious in training my abdominals over the years. All those bloody hanging windshield wipers and leg lifts and scissors etc., those have now really come in handy. 

Made it up had some brekkie and coffee, worked a bit on the computer and then did my first walk with Judy, probably going about a half mile up and down the road Kim lives on. Felt pretty good, though my whole goal here is just to get my body familiar with motion again. We walked up to this RR Xing, which I’m probably going to have to investigate later! Now I’d been told by one of the Cardiac Care docs that right now I don’t want to exceed 4-5 on the RPE scale, the rating of your perceived exertion. 

And I was warned that despite the bike being my activity of choice for cardio, that it might not be advisable right now due to the jostling and braking and the potential of crashing. They don’t want anything to hinder the healing process of my sternum, and what with all the upper body mechanics that go with cycling, the potential for a problem is much higher than in walking. So right now, at least for a month, walking is my cardio choice. They probably bloody freak out if they knew I’d likely ride my fixie if I was given the GO signal to bike. 

Came back and sat in the sun on a porch swing. I have to admit that just sitting there kind of bummed me out. I mean here it is, just about summer, after my having sat out the whole winter with that torn medial meniscus in my knee, and I’m like right back in the same boat again, having to really curtail my activity level due to an injury - this time open heart surgery. Had it been any other time in my life I’d have been out there riding or hiking for 3-6 hrs on a sunny Sunday. “Hell,” I thought, “at the very least I should be in N. Cal finishing up American Dirt.” 

Just so amazing how suddenly your life can take this crazy 180. Now I know, and I’ve rationalized all I’d been through and how life changing these last two weeks have been in my world. I mean really there was no choice but to do and be where I’m at right now. To have done nothing after finding out how grave my coronary artery situation was, hell that would just be a miserable life of wondering how, when and where the big one would happen. That would be living the malaise and limited functionality that I’d been experiencing - and detesting - for the prior year. Doing nothing, or at the very least postponing the inevitable surgical intervention would have been crazy. 

So as I sat there swinging on the swing with the bright warm sun beating down on me, I had two distinct perspectives kind of doing wrangling with each other in my mind: the first perspective, the “why me” mantra, the weep-wow poor, poor pitiful me song playing over and over in my head was simply me just feeling sorry for myself on such a beautiful day where all I could do for the day was to walk a half mile. The other perspective, the positive one that’s a bit harder to look at because it involves extreme patience and planning, tells me I’ve progressed well in just 5 days since laying on the operating table, and tells me I have this wonderful second chance in life beginning to open up to me. 

Yea, patience is going to be the key here. Loose a little bit this summer in the recovery process for the good of the rest of my life. It’s so easy to talk the talk with something like this, but to walk the talk, that’s much harder. I just have to keep telling myself what Doc Badger told me during my heart cath: “Peter, you just won the lottery!” Forget about not finishing American Dirt, forget about not being able to go ride or hike on a beautiful Sunday, forget about starting back at ground zero in my fitness routine, forget about all of that because I just won the lottery. 

So I sat out in the sun for about an hour before going back inside. Judy left for Stow and that’s when I made me first venture up stairs to go lay down on a bed instead of on the couch down in the living room. Now Kim had warned me about doing stairs. And damn was she right. Got to the top and I could feel my heart beating pretty good, probably a bit more than that RPE 4-5 I was supposed to not exceed. Amazing! That was hard. Laid down and I must have cat-napped for a good 4 hours. By the time I’d gotten up we’re talking like 5:30 PM. 

Now Kim had done some shopping for Mike and I before she left to go to dad’s, believing and making me believe that I’d be down in the kitchen creating these scrumptious meals that evening with Mike doing the sous-chef thing helping me out. NOT! I was so weak and tired when I got up that I just had zero motivation to plan, prep and then cook a meal. Mike got back from a dog walk and felt just the same. So round about 8 PM, we’re both looking at each other kind of wondering what we’re going to eat for dinner. He fired up some leftovers from Sunday and then we boiled some frozen chinese dumplings. And that was it. That was my first full day away from the hospital….work on computer, walk a half mile, sit and swing in the sun for an hour, sleep for 4 hours, lay on the couch and eat dinner, go to bed?  Yup, going to take a whole lot of patience to see myself from moving away from this pathetic existence to riding dirt track up a mountain again.