The Recovery - a wee bit of perspective

I was discharged from hospital on 27 January after 5 glorious days of complete rest.

If you ever find yourself in such a position or are in anyway the type of person who gets a bit restless or fretful, then I recommend that you read 'My Name is Doddie', the biography of Scottish rugby legend published last year as part of his efforts to raise money and awareness of the mind bogglingly awful condition that is Motor Neurone Disease. They way the big man is dealing with this cruel card he's been dealt would bring a tear to a glass eye.

In hospital, I put my feet up, read a little, watched Peaky Blinders on Netflix, moved around the room to have my meals with different views and went to the toilet occasionally. I had frequent checks on my blood pressure and oxygen levels, a bit of fussing over changes to the medications that had been used to treat my misdiagnosed heart attack and changed my compression socks daily. In the end, the hospital realised that if they didn't kick me out they might run into a tea shortage well before Brexit even started to take effect, so as soon as my INR finally reached the minimum acceptable level I was out on my ear.

In that time my resting heart rate dropped from 75 back down to 60. In the 5 days after leaving, it crawled back up to 65 and has stayed around that level pretty consistently since, up to 68 briefly and down to 63 occasionally - funny wee vagary of the Fitbit, you can often be relaxed with a HR below what it records as your Resting Heart rate, something to do with how you sleep I believe, but I often see it a few beats below 60.

There really isn't a lot of information out there about what you can expect in the next stage. Take it easy is the main thing, don't exercise too vigorously for a couple of weeks, but no way of knowing when you can get back in the saddle - and this is what you really want to know in the early stages.

Most recovery plans I've been offered aim to get the patient up to walking for 40 minutes a few times per week, whilst I'm looking to set my bar a wee bit higher than that and after 1 week was pretty much walking 40 minutes daily - albeit, I was feeling the effects of that initially -  getting up to 1 hour in the 2nd week and by the 3rd week easily able to get out for a good 2.5 hour hike every couple of days.

What you can't really account for is just how much rest you also need at this point. I left the hospital feeling revitalised and full of vim & vigour and feeling desperate to get out for a run or a bike ride, almost fantasising about doing circuits or lifting weights. Just a week of having a fairly easy time of it at home showed me that this condition isn't just as simple as take some medicine, feel better, get back to training. There's a real need to come to terms with the predicament that has just been survived. There's also a need to realise that the body has had a bit of a kicking and could still yet suffer unwanted long term consequences if you get the recovery wrong. On the other hand though, there is a tremendous amount of good to be gotten out of a period of more gentle exercise. The walking has been uplifting. The need to have a more stable diet has been beneficial too, although it has highlighted my terrible discipline when it comes to peanuts. I'm allowed alcohol if I want, but actually there are too many risks associated with head knocks, so I've just completely knocked the drinking on the head and I have barely missed it at all - I'm now a fizzy water with a wee dash of cordial guy. I can do press-ups no problem and I quite like doing them, but I think I need to spend some time working on my flexibility, so I'm going to avoid strenuous exercise for another few weeks and focus on yoga type stretching - I am a tree! I am the mountain! I am the soft breeze!

In the meantime, I'm really enjoying getting out for my walks. It's good to reacquaint myself with the city and the parks that I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by. The weather this year is freakish though and at the end of February, 1 year on from us enduring the 'beat from the East' it's now way too warm. The flowers are already out in force - not sure how the next deep frost will affect them, but in the meantime I'm enjoying this very early start to Spring and am much more aligned with my need to recover physically more slowly than my ego would like, but even that has taken a few weeks to accept.