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May 25: In Stow at Judy’s for my rehab.


May 24: Made the big drive today from Lakewood at Kim’s house to Judy’s house in Stow to continue my REC. Now to be honest my REC is really nothing more than to do nothing - except for walking - such that I can let this sternum and all the musculature around it heal. I mean my lifting restrictions are pretty specific: do NOT lift, push or pull anything that is more than 10 pounds! And add to that the reaching issues I currently have. I mean if I try to reach to pick up say my cell phone, where I extend my arm out at full extension, kind of like reaching back with a chest fly motion, wow, feels as if my pectoral muscles are about to pull off the rib cage. Makes sense I guess when you think that all those muscles had to be cut to open my chest up. So anyway, my range of motion is severely limited. What’s more, when I look in a mirror…ouch, I see myself as already having atrophied a good deal in the chest, back and shoulders. Lost a cup size already in the chest! I’m going to look like a total gimp once this sternum thing is healed up and I’m given the green light to begin an upper body strength regime. Kim’s already got the ball rolling in that area with respect to who I’ll be seeing for my rehab and what the time line looks like. She did, just to reiterate her mantra to me about NOT doing anything upper body-wise, forward to me some conversations she had with my Rehab docs already, where they stressed to her the importance of me letting that sternum area heal for the first 6 weeks post-opp. Consensus is that 3 months from now, what with my current non-active status and then the remainder being in an active status, that I’ll be able to get close to where I was when all this happened. 

Hey, the die was cast a week ago when I had the surgery, so this is my future and I by gosh have to accept it. It’s just to think of how much of a decrement in my fitness I have to sink to before I can actually start the building back up process, that’s what eats at me. I mean I totally look forward to when I’m given the green light to get things going, and I’m pretty stoked that I’ll be doing this under the auspices of some pretty brilliant sports cardiologists and exercise physiologists. From what I’ve been told by my sis is that these guys are just world class in the rehab of athletes with my condition. I mean it will be like having a coach! Wow, what a concept. And one thing I know about coaching is that my job is usually urging my clients to do less rather than do more. It will feel very different to be on the other side of this process. 

The drive from Lakewood to Stow was eventful only in that I can, when I’m being transported in a motor vehicle, feel each and every freaking bump and pothole in the road. I mean the shock goes directly to my sternum. Sometimes I have to hold this little red heart shaped pillow the Clev. Clinic gave me, this to kind of cushion the road shock. Got to Judy’s and hung out outside on the patio, whereupon her son Jim, his wife Emmy, and their daughter Eleyna and her friend came to visit us for a couple hours, and then Judy’s sister Vic came over with some dinner she’d made for us. We all ended up doing a walk of about a mile around the neighborhood, then sitting around talking for an hour or two. I was probably up and down, and walking around more today than at anytime thus far, and it eventually showed, because by about the time they were ready to leave I was starting to have my mid-afternoon doze-offs. I was just doing these head bobs as I was in conversation. 

Once everyone left I just went indoors and napped on the couch for several hours. Definitely a long day for little Petey!