The healing continues, and I am feeling pretty good. Still fighting neck and back issues but my chest incisions are doing pretty good and I had a check on the healing this morning with my regular doctor. She said it was the best incision for this surgery she had ever seen and said there will probably be very little scarring. I have a post-op appointment with my surgeon next few week to remove stitches, get another check-up and, fingers crossed, get released to drive again.
The biggest part of the healing is obviously where they split my chest open. They saw your breastbone down the center and spread your chest apart, do what needs done, then they wire your breastbone back together. Then they glue/stitch/staple (one of those things) your skin back together. There is some pain at the beginning, but not as much as I thought there would be. The biggest thing is that there are a lot of weight and movement restrictions that make life difficult for a while. I can only lift five pounds per arm/ten pounds total between them. Arms must stay in front of the body and hands do not cross the chest so getting dressed and personal hygiene can be quite challenging so they teach you how to adapt until you are recovered. I still have a little chest pain, but it is tolerable without any meds. The absolute worst thing, though, is sneezing. That will put literally put tears in your eyes. It hurts so bad.
I am now down 37 lbs. so that is a real mental boost and definitely helps with my overall health. I still have a few more pounds to go to get where I want to be and that should be attainable with my diet and continuing exercise. I will have a lot of questions next week for the post-op visit with the surgeon. I am trying to keep myself from doing too much but it’s hard to do when I feel like I am doing so well and healing fast. I am back up to walking nearly 3 miles a day and I am increasing it a bit each day. One day it was 3.5 miles!
My truck was towed over today to get fixed and I was hoping it wouldn’t be too expensive. They were able to get it in for a look today and it was pretty much what I suspected – bad fuel pump. Not very cheap to fix but nearly half the price was the parts. This repair should last the life of the truck and I think I should be in pretty good shape now. The fuel/emissions systems have been a pain in my ass and by now there’s not much left to replace.
But, I will be driving soon and that is really important. I cannot wait to do something as simple as walking someplace other than in front of the house. The highway can get really busy and crowded on weekends. I really want to be in the trees walking, maybe a few little hills to build up my stamina once again. I want to go walk with some friends in different places. I have plenty of people offering to help but I am so ready to do things on my own again – get groceries, go to appointments…typical things we take for granted until we cannot do those things.
It’s a holiday weekend here in the States so I don’t think I would be going anyplace other than the store even if I was able to drive. Too many people out and about and I don’t enjoy being in crowds at all. But, the weather is going to be nice and at least I can grill some up salmon burgers and some diced potatoes with peppers, onion, and olive oil. A fairly healthy meal and delicious. I’ll probably make up another ciabatta panini with grilled chicken. I do love to grill and it never matters the time of day; one time a party broke out at my house in Colorado (as was often the case weekly at least once) and we got hungry so we ended up grilling burgers at 3:00 A.M. Bodies were strewn everywhere and we had a great time.
Anyway, hope everyone has a great weekend – holiday or not.
