On My Way

I don't mean to brag, but I can probably beat any living person in a foot race. I am practically a world-class marathon runner. I pretty much invented running. Actually, I started my cardiac rehab this week and I am feeling great. In actuality I can jog about three blocks before I need a break, but I added a little more normal to my life again.

I had a checkup with my cardiologist last Friday and I got good news. She told me my incision is healing well, my heart sounded strong, my blood pressure was normal and I needed to eat more steak. It might have been the best checkup I've ever had. I need the steak because I'm a little bit anemic right now. I didn't get any blood transfusions during my surgery and I'm still a little low on red blood cells. A steak is apparently a good way to get over that. I have taken that recommendation to heart and had a delicious lunch today. How many people go to see a cardiologist and get told to eat steak. I'm just that good.

I was really looking forward to this checkup because I expected the doctor to write up a recommendation for cardiac rehab for me, but it didn't quite go as planned. I asked about the rehab, but she told me that since I had done it before and seemed to be in decent shape that I should do it myself.

I remember most of what I did in rehab last time and I have a heart-rate monitor so I think I should be able to keep myself alive. I won't push myself too hard or let my heart rate get too high and I'll increase the amount of work I do and my max heart rate by regular intervals. If all goes according to plan I'll be back in good enough shape to start climbing again by sometime in December.

So far I've worked out twice. Now, I know it might be premature to say everything is going to be perfect, but I have felt great through both of my workouts so far and I'm confident the positive results will continue. I started both days with a five minute warm up of brisk walking to get my heart rate up. I followed that with a slow jog for as long as I could without raising my heart rate above a certain level. Once it hit the maximum I decided on, I slow back down to a brisk walk. I do those two exercises for a combined ten minutes and then cool down for another 5 minutes with a slow walk.

I'll stick to a cardio-only workout for the first few weeks and then slowly start incorporating pushups, sit ups and other light strength exercises when they won't make my blood pressure go up too high. When three months of that routine is said and done I'm willing to wager that my body will pretty much look somewhere between Brad Pitt in Fight Club and Arnold Schwarzenegger when he won his first Mr. Universe Title. I don't mean to sound conceited, but I'm gonna look amazing. I'll post pictures later once I'm in perfect physical shape.

According to Plan

I have not had the best luck making plans in the past. I end up needing open-heart surgery half the time I try to come up with something to do with my life, but I'm really banking on that changing. I've been spending a good amount of my recovery time trying to make some new plans for myself since my latest surgery cancelled the last batch I was working on.

I'm gonna focus my energy on short term goals for the time being and expand to longer term ones later on. My current goal is to start cardiac rehab. I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm almost positive I'll be accomplishing this goal next week. For whatever reason the recovery gods have seen fit to bless me with a rapid and pretty painless recovery so far. I have sacrificed many virgins in their honor to say thank you and I think that has really helped apease them.

During my last recovery I didn't start cardiac rehab (a monitored exercise program conducted by trained nurses and physical therapists specifically for heart patients) until the 12th or 13th week of my recovery. This time around I'm looking to start it during my 6th week. I would say that's a pretty good improvement from the last time around. I'm telling you, it's absolutely because of the virgin sacrifices. I am totally convinced of the power of blood offerings now.

Cardiac rehab is important to me because it's how I learn what my new limits are and how I feel when I reach them. Every time I have open-heart surgery I feel like I have a new cardiovascular system. I need to relearn what being tired feels like, how long I can be tired and how hard I can push myself to get there. I don't want to take it easy on myself and I certainly don't want to push too hard. I am determined to get back into shape as quickly as possible and I need to learn how hard I can work to do that.

I don't want to plan too far ahead, but I'm convinced that if all goes well in rehab I'll be climbing again by December or January. I am more than a little excited by the thought of climbing again, but I've been trying to keep it in check to avoid driving myself crazy. I really don't want these plans to get a wrench thrown in them so I refuse to plan past rehab, but I'm hopeful that rock climbing is in my near(ish) future. I'll have to round up a few more virgins in the next couple of months to keep myself in the gods favor.

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock

Click, click, click, click, click, click. I hear it in the morning when I wake up, when I'm laying in bed trying to fall asleep and one hundred different times throughout the day. The sound might drive some people crazy, but not me. I hear something different. It's the sound of life, it means everything is ok and it's what my heart does 24/7 now.

I knew I'd be able to hear my artificial valve opening and closing sometimes, but I had no idea it would be so often or so loudly. At first I could only pick it up when I was surrounded by silence and concentrating. Now, even the TV can't drown it out. It began as a novelty. I was excited the first time I heard a click and I immediately wanted to show my family and have them listen to the distinct clicking sound my valve makes, but it has morphed into so much more. It's a reassurance that everything is alright. I love the sound my heart makes now. It's a reminder that it's working and that I'm alive.

I wake up to the sound of a properly functioning heart. It reminds me throughout the day that it's still working and I fall asleep to the sound of it continuing to kick ass. It's hard to explain, but I find a lot of comfort in it.

For as long as I can remember I've been told that I need to be conscious of and on the look out for signs that something might be wrong with my heart. My aortic valve has been the trouble maker my entire life. First, it was too small and misshapen. Then, it couldn't close all the way and it leaked a lot. Next, it wasn't functioning properly anymore, it was leaking and it was enlarging my left ventricle. There were some good times in the middle. I had a 10 year stretch when it was functioning pretty normally, but problems kept popping up. Now, it just opens and closes all day long. It doesn't leak, it's not too small and it doesn't malfunction. Now, it clicks away all day long and causes me absolutely no problems.

Maybe it's a comfort because all of my problems have been impossible for me to detect in the past. I couldn't feel any of my problems, I couldn't see them and I certainly couldn't hear them. Now, there's no mystery about what my aortic valve is doing. It's opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing. And, I know it's doing that because I can hear it working. As long as my heart continues to click I can rest assured that the valve that has caused so much stress throughout my life is finally just doing its job.

Spontaneous actions and a little bit of mystery might be fun personality traits for friends or family members to have, but it's not what I'm looking for in a heart valve. I want reliable, I want predictable, I want boring and I've finally found that. I'm looking forward to the rest of my heart's unexciting life. Don't get me wrong I love adventure, but I'm ready for it to come from a different source.