Laurie's Heart Update

Sunday, September 16, 2007

9/16: Update

The happy news is that I finally hit 3/4 of a mile on the treadmill today! That took about 24 minutes; my goal is to increase to 30 minutes and then go for increasing the speed. I figure if I keep it at about 30 minutes then it still can be scheduled in, more than that and I start to make excuses.

The bad news is that now that I have been more active in doing things around the house (painting, moving some things, etc) the right back where the muscles were cut for the wretched thoracotomy has opened up again. The good news, relatively speaking, is that the pain from that keeps me from doing too much. Since this week is the one-year anniversary of that surgery I doubt it will get much better. I also suspect that the right side will remain weaker. This also meant that I held off on swimming, but I hope to try that in the future. I am going to try to get some rehab ordered with the intention of maybe getting my arms stronger.

My first follow-up in Boston is this next week. Chest X-ray and appt with Dr. Cohn on Thursday and echo and appt with Dr. Baughman (my cardiologist in Boston) on Friday. Everything scheduled, of course, so that I won't be able to do anything else! I'm going to try and change the echo appointment so I can get to a museum. I'm going to be scolded by Dr. Cohn. He wants me to lose 20 pounds on the basis that since my valve size is so small that it will do better lugging around less weight. You can't argue with the man's logic. Unfortunately I have gained 5 pounds. I will beg him for some lattitude! I'm ready to get down to business now--really. I just needed more brain cells so that I could use my steel-like will to defeat the calories. You all should know that is VERY tongue in cheek!

Still working on returning to my job. Will be the first week of October, but not sure of where and how much.

I returned to Fellowship last Sunday as well as today, it was wonderful to see everyone there again. I'm kind of geographically out of it now, so will have to find a closer one at some point. In other news, for those long-term readers, I am very happy to report that for the first time in three years Chester (aka devil's spawn!) has been spending a few minutes lying on my chest when we first settle into bed. This is a big deal, because either he hasn't wanted to or chose the times when I was too sore. He's been with me since he was a 5 week old kitten, and always napped on my chest, right over my heart. In the last weeks before the first surgery the murmer was so strong that you could easily feel it by putting a hand on my chest. He was totally freaked out, kept on reaching out a paw and then pulling it back because of the odd sensation. So having him crawl up and settle on my chest and purr happily for several minutes is a really nice return of behavior. Now if I could just get him to stop attacking everyone else....

Thanks for checking, Laurie

2 Comments:

  • At 11:32 AM, Blogger Katie said…

    Laurie - I'm glad Chester has you! Hope they back heals better!

     
  • At 1:35 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Chester..aka psycho cat from hell.

    ive never wished bad things would happen to an animal before....

    Joanne

     

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