Progress

We had an appointment with Dr. Mallea on Thursday. It was a good meeting, but there was some concern about Chris' hydration levels. He has been instructed to drink more and then have some follow-up bloodwork done this coming week.

We're both still adjusting to this new life. Chris is on the go every single day... fishing, swimming, taking water aerobics classes. If someone would have told me in February that in six months Chris would be exercising at the Y sometimes TWICE in one day -- or that he'd be waking before dawn to go to fishing and be back in bed before my alarm rang -- I would have shook my head in disbelief. I would have to ask "Do you know him?"

I felt very overloaded this week. We had a big weekend event at work coming up and I have so many things going on... my brain went on vacation without me. That happens. Rarely. It happens to me when I'm on overload. I did laundry on Thursday night specifically so I could wear my red shirt to work. While putting the washed clothes into the dryer, I didn't see my red shirt. It was on the bed. *growl* At least doing another load of laundry isn't such a terrible consequence. It does, however, make me ever-so-thankful that the intersection was clear when I ran that red light during one of these mental disconnects.

Chris & I decided to take his picture every month on the 10th to show his progress on a consistent basis. I leave you now with his 10-day post op picture and today's.

Like a fish to water

I've recently changed up my exercise program. I now try and ride the recumbent bike at the IAC 5 days a week in the morning (I'm up to 35 minutes on level 2), then in the evening I go to the YMCA and swim in the lap pool for 30-60 minutes. Ok, I can't really call it swimming per say but I thrash with my arms, legs and sometimes both at the same time to get one from one end of the pool to the other (25 yards). I must be doing some work because it tired me out. I never really learned how to swim because the summer I was supposed to learn, I burned my face pretty bad in a fireworks "experiment" and I couldn't go into the pool for 2 weeks. Its hard work and because of my heart I have to take frequent breaks, but its good exercise and the Y has the nicest pools around.

In other news, I went "off the reservation" so to speak regarding my blood pressure medications, I'm currently only taking the attenolol at night and have been doing this for about a week now. Today the blood pressure machine at wal-mart said I was running 105/55, and thats without being on them for a week. Hopefully when we go to the doctor next week he won't yell at me too much, but my dizzy spells have been reduced to mere mild annoyances instead of falling over.

Sadly I'm having a new problem with insomnia. I have RLS (Restless leg syndrome) I run marathons at night in the bed, and its very hard to fall asleep when your legs wanna get up and walk to alaska even if the rest of you is bone tired. I was taking Requip for this, but my new stomach is super sensitive to this medication and within a few minutes of taking it I get some pretty violent dry heaves and nausea. That can't be good for my new intestinal arrangement. As a bonus when you stop taking requip, studies have shown your RLS gets worse. I'm gonna ask my doctor about a more stomach friendly medicine or possibly a sleeping pill prescription.

The other night I was up until 5 AM unable to sleep, I tried several different things. Eventually I ended up walking in circles from my front door to my back door for 25 minutes. For the first ten minutes the cats (Dusty and Digit) just watched me walk back and forth like I had gone insane. However, pretty soon Dusty was running the route I was walking and he did so for about 15 minutes, he slept better than I did I think.

In more swimming news I took Kim to the Y with me yesterday as a guest and we spent a couple hours in the pool, it was nice to be there with someone else. We are trying to get her signed up and get her dad signed up also. They have a bunch of free classes for Y members and I am looking at the water aerobics as some fun kind of exercise. I must admit at first I was nervous about taking my big white belly to the Y for swimming fearing they might try to harpoon me or shove me back into the pool whenever I got out, but hey, the Y is filled with people just like me. Now my attitude is yeah, I'm a fat guy in a pool, (though rapidly shrinking) what ya gonna do about it?

The scale says 277, which means my 2 week stall at 280 may finally be over, still not sure where the weight is dropping from.