An Exercise In Patience

Today is Monday, September 8th, almost 2 weeks since my surgery. Things are going pretty well, I suppose. I've been sleeping from 10:30pm to 7:30pm consistently for the past week or so, I'm generally not in a lot of pain, my energy level has picked up a bit, and my appetite is starting to increase (by the way, thanks to everyone that has brought over food in the past week - it has been thoroughly enjoyed by the Smith family).

There have been a few minor setbacks. I still get pretty tired mid-day (probably still feeling the effects of 7 hours under anesthesia), I'm still quite sore when I wake up in the morning, and the one time I tried going out (to a football party on Thursday night hosted by a good friend from Mercer), my incision started bleeding about 30 minutes after I arrived and I had to leave. Tricia thinks that these are signs that I need to slow down a bit. Though I'm sure she's probably right, I'm still going to search for that balance between doing too little and doing too much. Sitting around the house all day is probably not good for my physical recovery and is DEFINITELY not good for my mental recovery.

One thing that should help my recovery is cardiac rehabilitation, which involves medically supervised exercises designed to strengthen the cardiovascular function. I'll be able to start this as soon as I am cleared to drive (which won't be earlier than Thursday) and look forward to seeing some progress through this program. It will be nice to have something tangible to measure progress (for example, how many minutes I can walk on a treadmill). Right now, my measure of progress is based on my gut feeling ("I think I feel better than yesterday") as well as comments from others ("You look a lot better than you did a few days ago"). Don't get me wrong, I love getting everyone's feedback and I appreciate it very much. However, it will also be nice to have numeric evidence of my improved health. Guess that's the actuary in me talking. Good to know he's still in there...