Wednesday Wrap Up

After my weekend of exercise, I kept the ball rolling on Monday. When I got home from work, it was pretty warm and there was a little sun left. I decided to sneak in a quick bike ride. So I rode around the neighborhood for about 20 minutes before it starting getting too dark to safely ride on the road. It was a short ride but it was encouraging to know that in a few weeks, I will be able to ride some after work even if it is just around the neighborhood. Also it got me itching for March 14th. Do you know the significance of March 14th this year? Besides that it is my brother Tom's birthday of course. I will let you try to guess and I will answer the question in a future blog. (I am stealing some of quackenblogger.blogspot.com's style by challenging you with a question to answer).

After my Monday night ride, I had to do my Physical Therapy exercises. My PT, Jane from Advanced Orthopedics, sent me home with several exercises including stretches that I had to do 2 to 3 times a day as well as strength exercises that I did 1 or 2 times a day depending on the exercise. As I have said before, doing all these exercises is very time consuming but I was able to get them all done while watching some TV.

But this was not the end of my Monday. A week before, Melissa had oral surgery. Her recovery was not really going that great and she had gone back to the doctor who prescribed a powerful antibiotic for her to take. That night she took her pill around 10PM and by 11PM she started itching. Her face got all puffy and she was having trouble breathing. We called a 24 hour nurse line. The nurse told her to take 2 Benadryl and then head to the emergency room. So she took 2 pills and we headed to Saint Mary's. Saint Mary's advertises that people will never have to wait more than 30 minutes in the waiting room. When we got there, it was practically empty. Mondays are a good day to go to the emergency room-much better than a Friday or Saturday night. They took her back right away and started her on some medications to combat the effects of the antibiotic. After a few hours, they let her go home. We got home a little after 2AM. The next day, Melissa got up at 6 and went to the store to get some medications and then drove up to NOVA for a meeting. I thought she was a little crazy but she works very hard at her job and felt strongly that she needed to go to this important meeting. I am not sure how she did it because I could barely get up the next day.

Melissa is doing much better now but we still have to monitor her and she still has to take a lot of medication for the next week or two. I am keeping my eye on her to see if any of her symptoms return. And her jaw is feeling much better and she is able to eat now and was even able to do a 2 mile run tonight with her training team. She is a strong woman!

On Tuesday, I had my second PT appointment with Jane. I ran through my stretches and exercises that I had done on my first visit. Then they added several more exercises. So now it takes me about 2.5 hours to do all my PT exercises. I will be continuing to work at home and do not have to go back to Advanced Orthopedics for PT again. I am going to have to do something about getting in my other workouts though. My only option is to get up early in the morning before work to do my other workouts. I don't see it happening in the immediate future but it is something I want to work towards. It is important for me to keep doing all my PT exercises. I go back to the doctor February 17th and I am determined to impress him with my progress.

One thing that may help me with getting up early is to start getting up early on Saturdays so my sleep is more consistent. We are going to start working out on Saturday mornings with our 10K training team at our church. I will be walking while Melissa runs. I still don't know when I will be able run. I probably won't be able to race again until the Fall. For now, I will play it by ear. I am hoping that by summer, I can start running in the mountains again. But that is a long time from now. Right now I have to take it one day at a time.

Next time, I plan to detail the specifics of my workout. I am thinking of posting some pictures and/or video so you can see what it is exactly that I am doing to get healthy.