Recovered

As of Tuesday, Apr 26, I am officially "recovered" from my surgery.

Like with most official proclamations, this one deserves the quotes. I am actually more like 90% recovered with respect to my sternum. I am lifting things less than 40 or 50 pounds with no problem, although it's hard to get family and friends to recognize that I can actually do those things. I can get out of bed or up from a chair and use my arms, probably the hardest thing to get used to after being so diligent about *not* using them.

And, of course, I don't "feel" particularly recovered. It will take another six weeks or so for my body to stop freaking out about the surgery. In particular, I have a muscle running from the right side of my neck down into my ribcage on the right side that tends to be particularly sore, for example. My left hip also has been problematic, although I'm happy to say I seem to be getting over that and am aggressively walking again. I hope to start running in a few weeks, at least for a minute at a time, once I can walk at a 15 minute mile pace for a half hour. Right now it's around a 20 minute pace, and it's for 20-25 minutes.

I'm also looking forward to more Wii Fit activity, which I plan to do along with some hand weight work over the next month or so. I will get back to calisthenics once the unruly bits are back to form.

Considering how much I was dreading the recovery, this one has been easy and I'm glad to be within spitting distance of fully functional. Last Sunday I sang a two hour choir concert plus another 90 minutes rehearsal ahead of time, all without any lunch. Tonight I will accompany the same choir at a gig, and for a few hours there it looked like I would be packing my keys and amplification to the gig as well.

About the only weird thing has been having an INR result of 4.3, which is fairly high. This is how long it takes my blood to coagulate as measured in seconds, normal is about 1 second. With two valves, they want my INR at 2.5-3.5, which is actually higher than the 2-3 numbers I was looking for with a single artificial valve. I'm even taking the same amount of Warfarin that I was before, although exercise does bring the number down. More post-surgery body freakout wackiness.

And, with that, I retire this blog for the foreseeable future.