Not a Competition

You know what?! Just like everything else in life, heart surgery and heart surgery recovery is pretty much the same thing, in my opinion: NOT a competition. I can see the eyes of at least my best friend rolling in her head right now and  saying in her mind, "Oh, boy. EVERYTHING is a competition, otherwise it ain't worth getting outta bed!", but in my little corner of the world, everything is not a competition. 

We are put on this planet to do our best - true statement. We are put here to give it our all - true again. But we are not put here to compare our faster with someone else's faster, or our longer with someone else's longer - if we do this, I feel, we already lost. And I don't want to feel like a loser. 

Recovering from heart surgery will teach you this easily: you'll read about people recovering in a month. In three weeks, even, and you're at week 3 and you can't tie your own shoes and what are you supposed to do?! Jump out the window? No - because just like we each eat slower or faster, more or less, we run or we walk, we get over a cold in a week or five, we like our coffee cold or hot, we're ALL different. Our bodies are all different. We have different surgeons and every procedure is different - we will all have a unique healing curve and whatever that is for us it is our curve! Sure, if in two years, we're still bed ridden from open heart surgery, there is a problem and a doc should figure out what it is. But if you walk 2 miles on a treadmill after 3 weeks and the dude next to you walks 3.5 after 4 and he's 20 years older than you, it's just what it is. 

Again, going back to my yoga roots, I try to not put judgement to it, and just focus on my breathing, my time, the way my body feels in the moment. I loved one of my yoga teachers that used to say "You know what, my downward dog is where it is today. It's not the best I've done, it's not the worst. It is where it wants to be today". We learn from it, but we won't make a judgement about it. 

And we put one foot in front of the other and we keep at it every day. Progress will happen, if we show up and stick with just doing our thing. 

I know - long rant to say, well, maybe my progress is not as fast as others'. But I am happy - it's all that matters. For the most part, my body is pretty mobile (sitting on my couch, legs under me, laptop on my lap, typing right now), I only have a pillow behind my back for back support and that's that. My left arm is still numb, but I am fully typing with all my 10 fingers, numb and all. I had days where I could not lift my glass of ice water as it was too heavy for my chest - not anymore. I did 35 minutes of treadmill today, and my diastolic pressure is finally in the upper 50's and 60's and not in the gutter (20's) anymore. There is small progress, but it's my progress. I'll get there. One day. At my own pace. 

If there is one promise to make to myself is to not compare myself with others and just focus on me. On my body, on what it wants and what it needs and to give it to it so it will carry me through these changes. 

Eating is still a bit of a struggle, as nothing really sounds good ... We're having stir fry (don't worry, no oil, all healthy veggies, in a wok) for dinner and we'll see how that will affect my INR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prothrombin_time) tomorrow - it usually should take days for diet to affect INR, but not in my case - changes in diet and coumadin doses affect me right away - another proof that we're all different.