Re-Hab Morning..........

I started my heart surgery re-hab a little over a week ago. For those of you interested in the mundane, here is how it goes:

Show up at 7:00 am and weigh yourself.
Relax a few minutes and then have your blood pressure recorded.
Open your shirt and have three monitor leads attached to your torso.
Get modest with the shirt and step onto the treadmill for a mild "walk"
Have blood pressure checked while on the treadmill
End treadmill session and rest for five minutes
Hop onto the exercycle and peddle for twenty minutes
Get off exercycle and have bloodpressure checked
Have monitor leads removed and say goodbye.

I actually enjoy the experience, but the therapists are so by-the-book that I am embarrassed for them at times. I mean I can understand how to turn a treadmill off....you hit the "off" button...right. This is explained over and over again. I started to adjust the seat height on the exercycle and was gently reminded that only staff can do that.....uh...OK!..... that's fine with me.

I imagine a big concern might be having a patient collapse on the treadmill and having his corpse rocket off the thing into the wall. So they have to be careful about the speed of the belt. Who wants to clean up that kind of mess, let alone make the report.

I do feel a bond with the other "re-hab'ers. Some are in exrtraordinary shape and go through the routine with a grim look of determination. Others are mystified, it seems, about why they are there. All have that "look" to one degree or another. The "look" being the expression of the reluctant passenger facing the alternative of climbing into a rundown railroad freight car if he doesn't make good with the task at hand. You know the kind of freight car I am talking about. The kind that goes where you don't want to be....Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but not much.

I don't compare myself to others. I guess I am somewhere in the middle of the pack. There are some definite
Sad Sacks (does this expression date me?) and then there are those that excel...but they have been at it for awhile longer than I.

The staff is professional and sincerely cares about the quality of the care they give. I will continue to try and loosen them up.

That reminds me. I met with the Registered Dietitian this morning after re-hab. She takes her job seriously and soon had me hem-hawing and babbling about how many times I eat this, or that, and how much of each, every day or week....Heck, I don't remember what I ate for breakfast three days ago. Did I eat lunch yesterday....was it buyout or homemade? What did you eat? Was it healthy or unhealthy?  Do you drink diet or sugared sodas? How many times a week? And what about eggs....how many a week? Do you salt the eggs?

And all this from a tiny little Philipina woman earnestly taking notes as I confessed to one gustatory backslide after another.

I decided to fight back when she asked if I ate fish regularly. I said no, because I was particular as to how it was prepared. She immediately asked how I liked my fish cooked......I answered "Battered, and deep fried."
It was as if she had been turned into stone. I had mercy and said...."Nahhh, just kidding."
Then she turned to the subject of red meat....which I don't eat often.... and pulled out a deck of cards and grandly announced that the size of that deck of cards was the maximum size of my future portions of red meat. I countered that the decks of cards in Vegas were much larger. A slight chuckle escaped her throat.

And my ideal body weight is 175 lbs. That is what some chart indicated. I haven't weighed 175 lbs. since I was in high school. I would have to lose another 25 lbs.....and my hip bones already grate against a wood bench. I'd have to have a pillow tied to my rear end.

I told the dietitian I would settle for 190...maybe 185

That's it for now.

Still trying to figure out "What's Next".

SRH