roughly 3 months until you are basically unrestricted in your physical activity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nI can now add my experience to those timelines. I was cleared to drive after 6 weeks. We spent another week in NYC after that getting everything ready to return to VA (nearly 4 months after arriving).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I drove with more mindful concentration given the danger of having an airbag hit me in the chest. Thankfully, the ride back was uneventful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The daily routine in the house is noticeably different than the routine in NYC had been. Getting used to it was fine, but it definitely required more attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We immediately resumed our normal social routines, which include a weekly neighbor dinner (in fact, we had one the very day we drove back) and a weekly men\u2019s lunch (ROMEO: Real Old Men Eating Out). It was great to reconnect with all of them and to feel a sense of normalcy returning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I still had to be very careful not to lift\/push\/pull too much weight, but every week got a little easier, and like the timelines above predicted, after 3 months (beginning of April for me), I really didn\u2019t need to pay too much attention to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s not to say that everything is back to the way it was (far from it). But, there\u2019s no fear of accidentally doing something too stupid. There are many reminders that this is a new normal<\/em> and most definitely not the old normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne example that will likely be true for the rest of my life is sneezing. Whenever I sneeze (I\u2019m out of the hospital for 10 months at this point), it feels like if the sneeze were just a tad harder, my rib cage would split apart completely. It won\u2019t, and I don\u2019t worry about that, but it absolutely feels like it would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The slightest touch on the scar down the middle of my chest evokes feelings that I never experienced before in my life. There is zero pain associated with that, just an extremely strange feeling that I can\u2019t describe. It can happen when my T-Shirt simply moves an inch to the side and rubs against the scar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m told that this will likely never go away. My best friend (am I allowed to use that phrase at my age?) had quintuple<\/strong> bypass surgery 13 years ago, so he has a similar scar, and still feels it like I do all these years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI\u2019m back to doing a daily routine of a mixture of Qigong and Yoga for 24 minutes. I haven\u2019t missed a day since I restarted on April 1st. I walk a couple of miles a couple of times a week outside on a hilly path at high speed and I walk 50 flights of stairs once a week (up and down).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The one thing I haven\u2019t done (and I know that I should), is lifting any kind of weights. I\u2019m certainly cleared for it, and I know it would be good for me, but I haven\u2019t had the interest. It\u2019s not fear, simply disinterest. We\u2019ll see if putting that in writing will motivate me in any way (for the moment, I doubt it).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The biggest surprise (and blessing) has been sleep. While I would hardly call myself a good sleeper<\/em>, the change from 2019-2024 and now<\/strong> is nothing short of miraculous. On a typical night, I\u2019ll get 5 hours of sleep (and a couple more of easy resting in bed). Occasionally, 6-7 hours (never uninterrupted, but at this point, still miraculous).<\/p>\n\n\n\nI still have some bad nights, but they are not frequent or quite as severe as they used to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the last thing to note is my resting heart rate. I mentioned previously that it used to be very low. Pre-surgery, roughly 48 BPM (beats per minute). Occasionally, while sleeping, it would dip into the 30s, but mostly be in the very low 40s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Post surgery, my resting heart rate was in the mid-70\u2019s, and would spike into the 80s with the slightest bit of activity. The doctors weren\u2019t concerned with that at all, since it\u2019s not a very high BPM, but it annoyed me a little (not that I was ever physically uncomfortable), because I didn\u2019t know if it would ever return to the old normal<\/em> rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter a few months, it dropped to 65. A couple of months later it dropped into the 50s. Now it\u2019s reliably back in the 40s. While it rarely got into the 30s during sleep, last night it did, for quite an extended period. I\u2019m happy about it, though to repeat, I don\u2019t really feel a specific difference as a result. It\u2019s simply a psychological calmness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a month, I will have my first surgical follow-up since January. I expect that to go well. I also have my annual physical scheduled as well, and I look forward to seeing the results of the blood tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For all the trials and tribulations that I went through before and after the surgery, I feel extremely fortunate to have the care that I did, and to have made it to this point. I look forward to the future with joy and excitement, every single day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the last post I discussed some major changes (mostly new drugs). I\u2019ll conclude this series (for now) by describing the new normal. Of course, everybody has a lifelong health journey that lasts until the very last second, so there might be future posts, but it will be because of new things to report, not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[1401,2],"tags":[1402,1379],"class_list":["post-14509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-2","tag-health","tag-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14511,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14509\/revisions\/14511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}