UPDATE: I went for a short walk (four blocks total) and yep, stamina is definitely not quite 100%! I did get shots of some flowers I took, though.
I was given this device to take home and use regularly as part of my recovery.
Despite appearances, you don’t blow into the mouthpiece, you suck air out of it. This causes the yellow ball to rise. My objective is to get the ball to the middle, where the happy face is:
On my first day home, I could do this, but only for a moment. Today, my third day home, I can now do it for multiple seconds, getting it up to the 2000 ml level. That may not seem like much, but frankly, I’ll take it!
The biggest realization for me coming out of the surgery is that while recovery may be relatively swift in overall terms, it will feel like ages to me. Before the surgery, I thought I’d be back to running possibly within a week (which genuinely gets a lol out of me now). The reality? I have stitches on my left side in three places that can’t come out for 10–12 days, so running, even if I had the energy, would be a dumb idea. And I don’t have the energy.
Basically, this has hit me a lot harder than I figured it would, even though what I’m going through is pretty normal for the type of operation I had.
My sleep has been poor, but is improving. I actually slept for multiple hours last night, which was nice. The sleep continues to be dreamless, though, and if my watch is right, I’m getting no REM sleep at all. But it’s getting better.
I am already much more mobile now. I can sit and stand like a normal person again, and move about without appearing to be in Grandpa Mode anymore.
Laying down is still a problem, which sucks because laying down for a nice nap would be ideal, but my left shoulder and side still ache when I recline. I mostly sleep on my right side, which is OK.
My appetite never suffered and I gained 1.9 pounds since the surgery. A lot of this is due to the reticence of my bowels to work normally. That has finally started to change, so I can hopefully stave off the Metamucil for now. I know this is TMI, it’s kind of unavoidable.
(Speaking of TMI [adjacent], they shaved my chest for the surgery pretty thoroughly–but only the left half. It looks very silly, but since I’m unlikely to go out topless any time soon, I’ll just let the fur grow back on its own.)
And on that note, I shaved my face this morning. That made me feel closer to normal. I could see enough beard growth to confirm it’s almost entirely white now. And I mean genuinely white, not gray, so I’d have a kind of professor thing going if I grew it out.
I will not grow it out. I don’t have a tweed jacket, anyway.
My energy, despite the lack of sleep, has also clearly improved. I won’t be running today, but I may venture outside, where it is a bit cooler, with some showers possible.
And in the end, I know this surgery may have prevented something worse eventually happening down the line. I try to remember that when I hit a bump in the proverbial road.
Meanwhile, here is a cat exercising.
And a photo of a flower I took when I went on a vast, four-block walk:
