Getting strong again

This is me on the afternoon of the first day after surgery. I'm sitting up out of bed, I've asked for my book and some glasses, and I've put on my own "luxury" robe.

Why?

I can't speak highly enough about the surgical and post-operative teams. While I was in the hospital I saw my one job was to work at feeling as well as I could. I didn't emphasize "getting better" because that might be out of my hands, but I did know that I could be fully responsible for making the best of every opportunity I had to be as well as I could. It's a subtle difference but an important one.

Shortly after this photo was taken I went for my first "walk". Probably not really a walk. The ward I was on was in the shape of a cross, with a central nurses' station, and rooms coming off each of the arms. My best guess is that the arms were about twenty metres/twenty five yards long. On the first day I went from my room to the nurses' station, up one corridor and back...maybe sixty or seventy yards round trip. It took a good twenty minutes and left me totally exhausted.

I had a tag on my arm saying "fall risk" and a nurse on one side with Genevieve on the other.

On the second day I made the trip eight times...it took me eight hours.

By the third day every nurse or procedure technician coming in would say "oh, you're that marathon guy aren't you?". I was off pain medication for more than twenty-four hours, and off the blood pressure medication as well, which none of the nurses could believe. I had a slight set back in that I put on eight kilos/twenty pounds in water weight on Saturday, and needed to be stabilized again. On Sunday I was asking to go home. I was disappointed when they wouldn't let me out on Monday, although they removed all the drainage tubes, catheters and pacemaker wires. By then I was cruising the halls of the hospital taking walks every hour or so, and covering my floor and the public floors below.

They made the decision to let me go home before lunch on Tuesday.

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