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June 14: In Stow at Judy’s for my rehab.


June 13: Sleep quality continue to improve on an incremental basis. But hey, I’m definitely seeing progress here. I have been able to gradually readapt to my preferential sleeping posture - the good old fetal position on both R and L sides. Well, my chest is feeling good enough now to do several hours on each side…with the bolstering of a great big pillow against my side to kind of take a bit of the pressure off of my chest cavity. 

I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to actually take some stress off of my poor low back. It’s like, for the last four weeks I’ve been sitting and lying down many, many, many hours per day, with my low back carrying the brunt of the burden. So being able to assume a different posture for even a couple hours at night to take some stress off of my low back, that’s really big here. And honestly, I swear, it’s like nirvana when I turn on my side right now, prop a pillow under my chest and close my eyes to initiate sleep. Wow! I’m gone for a couple hours of sleep accompanied with some dreaming. Yup, new territory. 

Ok, so much for the better night’s sleep. Because today was almost a bit of a set-back day, in that I just felt a bit more fatigued today as compared to the previous few days. Just didn’t have a lot of energy today, and I could feel it from the get-go. Had to go home for a bit to kind of watch over pop for half the day because our health care friend Karen could not make it today. No real problem there, but I just felt kind of out of it, and I especially noticed this when going up and down the stairs to my room to work at the desk. It’s crazy when you feel the effort of walking up stairs, and that was me today at home. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m feeling 3x better than a couple weeks ago, when I actually thought about how tough it was going up stairs. Now I’m just rolling up the stairs without thought of the consequences. 

Was just that I felt a bit of a malaise today. Took our dog Pepper for an hour walk, and even that was a bit tougher than normal. Now the sun was hot and the temp was a bit higher in the middle of the afternoon, so maybe that had an impact on me. But still, when we got back I rolled upstairs, worked for a couple hours and then I just had to lay down in bed and nap. 

Ok, how about another plus? My chest is healing just great, and the intense chest pain thing is becoming something that’s now in the rear view mirror. I totally know this when I sneeze! Before, when I was about to sneeze I’d have to bend over, brace my chest against my red heart pillow and my knees, then let the sneeze go. And good God was it painful. Felt as though I’d just taken a cannon ball to the sternum! Now, I’ve gotten by without all the bracing, where I just have to kind of bend over and hold my chest with my hands. And the pain is so much less than previous. Now I’m not dreading the sneeze and the cough. Yea, we’re getting back to normal in that area. 

Kim chauffeured me back to Judy’s house in the evening where we were visited by Leigh, who brought me this really nice framed collage of photos of myself and Judy. It’s almost funny, being four weeks into this, to hear of people’s reaction to my illness. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not really “funny”, more like it’s ridiculous, almost implausible, that kind of funny, like shocked kind of funny. Well, Leigh expressed this same WTF reaction to my situation. And my response to everyone, including Leigh is, “hey, nobody was and is more surprised than me!” Never did I see my future as including my being a recovering open heart surgery patient. “Funny” how life can change so quickly!