Angel Ackerman's Blog, page 3

A Clean Start?

My hope for the new year was to finish the book A People’s Guide to Publishing and use it as a guide for making goals for the publishing company for 2025 and to maybe, perhaps, finally finish my business plan.

With the ailment I inherited from the college student, I didn’t do nearly as much I had hoped over the holiday season, except for reading light fare like Blubber and binging old movies (Practical Magic, The Dream Team, A League of Their Own).

This year has been challenging– even with my attempts to get my act together– I am still where I was six months ago when I joined the Omada program.

But with my colonoscopy which happened December 30, and getting cleared for the Thrive Medical Fitness program at St. Luke’s Hospital Dec. 27, with my first workout scheduled for Jan. 1, I literally had a clean start.

A new year. A clean colon.

And then the dog ate a lot of the leftover Christmas cookies.

So now I won’t be tempted to eat them.

Back to the gym Wednesday’s exercises

I did my first workout with Alex at the St. Luke’s Sports and Performance Center at the Anderson Campus on Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. That was the “push” workout. The exercises reminded me a lot of the workouts Andrew and I did together at Apex Training. When I told Andrew about it later, he remarked, “the basics always work.”

I survived the workout well, and the next day my chest muscles in the area of my shoulders and armpits reminded me that I had exercised the day before. Alex has me using the treadmill for 15 minutes, with the goal of getting my heart rate to 120-130. It’s embarrassing how challenging the treadmill can be for me, all that walking fast and making sure my feet do the right things. I so envy the people who don’t have to hold on for dear life.

Friday’s exercises

Today we did the “pull” workout. I even brought an earphone so I could listen to a podcast on my treadmill walk. The fifteen-minute walk allows me to cover a half-mile. I know that’s rather pitiful, but we all start somewhere. Alex is learning that I can handle a lot more weight than he suspects when it comes to upper body exercises, and like Andrew, he loves to make that sadistic little statement of “looks like that was too easy.”

Alex wanted to see me four times a week, but he’s only at the Anderson Campus one day next week. So, I asked, where he would be. And he said Phillipsburg. And if you know me, you know I know Phillipsburg.

He looked surprised if I could come to Phillipsburg and I asked if that were okay or if it were too stalkerish… I’m literally in the middle of the two facilities.

I’ll be seeing him in Phillipsbug on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and then on Friday afternoon in Bethlehem Township. We scheduled all that when I saw him Wednesday, and today he said he was very excited to see me in Phillipsburg next week because that’s the gym he spends the most time in and it’s less cluttered.

When I left the hospital today, everything hurt. But I was proud.

Functional Fitness

My dear friend Thurston has been writing about what he calls “crisis conditioning” and functional aging as part of his Phulasso Living newsletter. (Read more about that in his own words here.) After a traumatic and severe leg break in Autumn 2023, he experienced his own fitness challenges. As an active guy, and a strong “in-shape” kind of guy, I think it surprised him how much energy and muscle power it took to have a mobility issue like his broken leg. He had to rely on mobility aids to get around his house (after weeks in bed) and I remember him commenting to me about how his strength did not guarantee that he had the upper body strength to support his own body weight.

The world suddenly looks very different when you face a flight of stairs with a pair of crutches or worse– a walker.

Thurston’s career has focused on safety and emergency preparedness. I think his accident may have changed his view on how much he can trust his own body, or perhaps how much he can take his body for granted, because in some ways, aging is a crisis event. Aging makes it harder to recover from injuries and from workouts. Aging makes it harder to maintain and even harder to build muscle.

But I have often viewed my own body as an unreliable partner. And something Thurston said in his newsletter hit the nail on the head.

After achieving a great deal of progress up until the spring and summer, I noticed something that really frustrated me. If I missed 3 or more days of exercise, I experienced stiffness and pain, and the number of repetitions and sets in my exercise routine would decrease! It was almost as if I hadn’t been doing much exercise at all.

–Thurston D. Gill, Jr.

I have been strength training on and off since college– which is 30 years now. I spent almost 10 years working at Target in a physically demanding job. As I approached 40, after a broken hand, I recommitted to my own fitness. And at 46-ish, I joined a private gym and hired a strength coach. I was a consistent client at Apex Training for three years, even when I had to scrape pennies together to pay for it, until my trainer had a family emergency that put a pause in our relationship and suddenly, I no longer had the money.

What Thurston describes is what I experience. That is what cerebral palsy does to me. My muscles in my legs and lower body never relax. They never get the message from the brain to relax. To facilitate better motion, I stretch and strength train and go to balance and gait physical therapy to show them rather than tell them what to do.

And the more I do it, the more that becomes their default.

And if I don’t do it, they forget.

I guess Thurston and I are both telling you not to take your body for granted, but to also realize that you need a plan to maintain your health and your strength because you never know what might happen. When I broke my hand, it was my dominant hand. That happened when I was in my late 30s.

Would it be more difficult now, a decade later, to do all those everyday tasks with my left hand?

What if I suddenly did have to use crutches?

If I fell, do I have enough upper body strength to pull myself across the floor? Into a chair?

Can I balance on one foot? For how long? Can I do it on each leg?

How do I carry items upstairs if I need one hand to hold the railing?

Can I navigate without relying on my eyesight?

Can I still walk a mile? Two? (If the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere…)

Do I have the strength to change a tire?

Colonoscopy

Yesterday I had a colonoscopy, which means that I went 36 hours without food and experienced my first bowel prep. As with many things, I approached it with the same curiosity I would other aspects of life. Like how long does it really take to clean one’s colon? How does it feel to fast for an extended period of time? Can I find a broth or a gelatin dessert I like?

I’m not a big meat eater, and was vegetarian for eight years before my daughter’s birth. So the clear liquids diet seemed abhorrent to me, and the fact that they asked you to avoid nuts, seeds, whole grains and vegetables and fruits with skin for five days also troubled me.

The directions for the prep said I needed a 64-ounce bottle of Gatorade, but not in red, orange or purple as those colors could look like blood in the colon. I didn’t know if blue were okay. I looked at all the flavors in ever store and it looked like yellow was the only color that was safe. Except Gatorade is gross. And it’s hard to find a 64-ounce bottle of Gatorade, so I had to hit the grocery stores. That’s a LOT of Gatorade.

I told myself– find a small bottle of a flavor that might work and taste test the Gatorade. But even then I could not do it.

I looked at this logically. The whole point of the Gatorade is to suspend the Miralax powder into a liquid and to offer the body electrolytes so you don’t end up horribly dehydrated. Gatorade is not the only electrolyte drink out there. There’s also Propel, G2 (okay so that’s just diet Gatorade), and high-end products like Liquid IV. I’ve been down this rabbit hole before with research when my primary care provider suggested I drink more electrolytes to treat my orthostatic hypotension. I already had a favorite.

(Here’s an old blog entry about the cardiologist I now refuse to see who thought he knew better than my primary care provider. Smug little doctor man. And here’s another that mentions electrolytes.)

I ordered myself some of my favorite electrolyte powder (Powder Vitamin Plus), in lemonade, unflavored and ginseng green tea. No colors.

As for clear liquid diet… I made chicken stock and froze it. But, I don’t like chicken broth and I could not convince myself to thaw it out and drink it. I found some gelatin that expired in 2022 from when I promised I would make Eva finger JellO, but I couldn’t find the JellO. Eva also brought home a bottle of Sprite.

I used the Sprite and a random can of Beetlejuice spiced apple soda from Fanta to make one batch of finger JellO but the color of the soda was bright green and I expected it to be golden. I also made a batch with white grape-strawberry juice (and that was diet).

Saturday morning I had a big salad, removing all the items from the “avoid list.” Then I had a decent dinner, and a few homemade Christmas cookies. Lately, if I have more than three Christmas cookies, the sugar makes my belly feel wonky and this night was no exception. I stopped eating at 6:30 Saturday night (and didn’t eat solid food again until 10 a.m. Monday).

On Sunday morning, I made some electrolyte water and a hot ginger drink. Midmorning I made black coffee and laced it with a little chocolate chip cookie dough Torani syrup. For lunch, I had a heap of finger JellO and a small cup of vegan soy ramen broth. In early afternoon, I drank a cherry Coke zero.

I took my first set of laxative pills at 2 p.m. and an hour later, well you can imagine the results. I already had no stool left in my colon, but as most of my intake had been brown liquid…

At that point, I filled a glass jug with 64 ounces water, and a scoop of lemonade electrolyte powder and a half scoop of the ginseng powder. I shook and started to add the miralax powder. Except it didn’t fit. Even with me stirring with a long spoon as I added it slowly.

I poured it all into the blender, which resulted in about 72 ounces of final mixture.

I put it into the fridge, with the overflow in a mason jar so that I could track how much I was drinking.

At 6 p.m., I started drinking. At first, it tasted good. The directions said to drink half. Now, at this point, it already looked like my colon was clean. And I was supposed to drink it in about an hour. A glass every ten to fifteen minutes. I managed the amount suggested in an hour and twenty minutes. By the end, I never wanted to see the mixture again.

The final set of laxatives were at 8 p.m. I went to bed about 8:45 p.m., but my lingering cough kept me up, and every time I coughed I had to use the bathroom. I finally dozed off at midnight, only to be scared awake by my alarm at 3:45 a.m.

My procedure was scheduled for 9 a.m. and the directions said to finish the prep mixture four hours before the procedure. I went downstairs and poured a glass, drinking while I watched the Apple TV program Trying. I made it through almost two glasses. Then the drink started to gag me. And I used the bathroom and saw that my waste was still as clear as my urine so I returned to bed.

Around 6:30 a.m. I woke again and took a shower. Checked my blood pressure and my weight. Blood pressure up, weight down by 3 pounds.

Eva took me to the hospital at 8. They had asked me to arrive by 8:15 a.m. Now, I schedule a lot of these procedures at St. Luke’s Easton Campus as it is about 600 steps from my house. It’s usually empty, and the doctors and medical professionals there always seem to take good care of me. I used the self-check-in kiosk and went up to the Lotus waiting room.

That waiting room is full of the chairs that I love. We had a teal chair that we called “the throne” that I bought myself when I found it on clearance. I loved that chair, but in its first few months of owning that chair, we got a puppy who ate the chair. We tried several times to fix it, but she repeatedly ate the chair until there was nothing left. For a while, we took the legs off and set it on the floor with a slipcover over it and just gave it to the dog, but eventually, we gave up and threw it away. Which broke my heart. Because she also ate holes in my couch.

When I ended up in the ER for stitches in March 2023, after the fall that left the scar under my lip, I noticed the Lotus waiting room was FULL of my chair. Half of them in the color I had purchased, half in St. Luke’s blue. I had been admitted to an upper floor, perhaps the third. I looked down upon the chairs as I headed for the door.

It’s an ugly waiting room with a collection of my chairs.

They took me back to the unit at 8:40. Eva had to leave to feed some clients breakfast and the nurse told her to come back to this waiting room. The unit looked the emergency room from every television medical drama made in the last thirty years. There was another person there getting prepped for something. And maintenance men changing the lights which technically put them at an angle where they could see through all the privacy curtains from above. Not that I care.

Two nurses started prepping me and the doctor and the anesthesiologist lined up for my consent and the consent of the person next to me. The whole process was a very efficient assembly line. I mentioned that during my prep all I could think about was saltines. And the staff laughed and said they could handle that. The nurses took one look at my tiny veins and I think they panicked. They got a third nurse specifically to start my IV.

That IV was beautiful.

She was like an IV angel.

Normally IVs are a tumultuous experience for me. When I had my tilt table test, the man who administered that IV dug around under my flesh for what felt like an eternity and left bruises all over my hand and arm from his failed attempts.

I have never had blood draws as smooth as what this nurse did yesterday. I included a picture: If you see the three dots on the top side of the frame in the middle of the edge of my hand and think of them as Orion’s belt (they are from an old cat scratch) and travel to the middle of my hand slightly to the left, you will see a tiny pin prick– and not the one between the two lines on my wrist– that’s where my IV was. There is no bruising. At all. I had an IV in this hand and there isn’t a single piece of evidence that it was there!

As the placed an oxygen mask over my face and told me to turn to my side, someone else gave me an extra pillow concerned for my comfort. My last thought as I watched the nurse or whomever finish pushing the plunger on my medicine was “Why do I need to be comfortable? I’ll be unconscious.”

It was 9:20 when I woke to a small bottle of water and a pile of saltines. I texted Eva and she was almost to the hospital. The doctor told me he did find and remove a polyp. And I was home by 10 a.m. And the saltines were delicious.

Gunk and other updates

It is Saturday, December 28, around 8:30 a.m. when I start this. Do not expect much eloquence from me, as the gunk Eva passed on to me from her recent illness is still interfering with my ability to think and sleep. It has instead given me a lovely cough, which now after more than a week is getting “wet” and “productive.”

I FINALLY finished my medical intake at the St. Luke’s Medical Fitness program. Because of my paused membership, I’m not sure when my end date in the Thrive program is but let’s assume mid-February for now. This whole journey started in early November when I visited my neurologist-physiatrist to talk to her about my recent mobility issues and any concerns she had about me returning to an exercise program.

The older I get, the more I worry that my cerebral palsy will cause me to hurt myself because I tend not to notice when my body is doing the wrong things.

Eva has worked really hard on remodeling the garage and including a space for a home gym, so I need to pay some attention to myself in that regard. But I’m out of shape, and falling more than usual, so I’m scared.

My neurologist referred me to the medical fitness program, and I had my first medical intake appointment on November 11. My blood pressure spiked during that appointment, so they sent me home without doing the baseline exercise portion of the intake. I returned two days later, and they almost sent me to the ER because my blood pressure was still bad.

Here are the previous entries recalling all of that, when it was happening.

Two trips to the primary care doctor, two trips to the cardiologist, and two or three falls (depending how you count, one was a trip, but I still believe it happened because of balance issues which makes it a fall) later, my blood pressure seems under control again.

And of course, yesterday, when I turned up at the gym in the basement of the hospital, it was 130/90.

Since I’ve been fighting the gunk, I almost canceled the appointment, but I filled a water bottle with my electrolyte flavor, grabbed a scarf, forgot a mask, and hopped in the car. My fear was that if I canceled the appointment, the intake would have to wait until after my colonoscopy and I was worried that one thing would lead to another and I’d never get this done.

When I arrived, I forgot my water bottle in the car, still couldn’t find a mask, and realized I had no idea where my membership/gym tag was. In the back of my mind, I knew I had packed a gym bag at my last attempt and that the tag was in the gym bag. But where was the gym bag? And what bag did I use?

Lots of hand sanitizer and frequent hand washing and I refused to shake the young man’s hand. I also told him if I continued to cough and he had to send me home, I understood. But I reiterated that I had had many trials to get to this point and I would rather be sent home than continue the cycle of not trying.

Onto the fancy scale I went (168) and I know that body fat percentage was in the forties, wish I could remember what it was when I was super lean a decade ago. Turns out that information may only exist in paper journals in my attic.

39-year-old Angel … with something to prove before hitting 40

The Angel in the pictures is 45 pounds lighter than me, and I think those 45 pounds, age and stress have had a ridiculous impact on my blood pressure and my mobility. (And for the record– the sweatpants worn by Angel in the pictures were my favorite sweatpants ever.)

I have learned that my body reacts strongly to salt and sugar, and that I “do better” when I cook, and that I have no self-control with processed snack foods like potato chips and doritos.

The trainer I met with yesterday talked about maximum heart rate and how hearts slow down as we age. The highest my heart rate reached in 2024, according to my AppleWatch, was 186. 207 was the highest since I got the watch. The online calculators I have seen suggest that my maximum heart rate for my age is between 170 and 179.

The trainer, and maybe his name was Ryan but maybe I invented that, would like to see me four times a week. I still have the mental mindset to make this work, but my physical stamina and fortitude have worn me out to the point where I can talk myself out of my own efforts.

I found this post from when I started my journey with Apex Training in 2021.

Maybe, someday, I will get my discipline under control and be one of those old ladies who powerlift. Screw the whole red hat/purple dress thing.

Meanwhile, Monday is my first colonoscopy. It was supposed to be the Monday after Thanksgiving but the doctor had a death in the family. Tomorrow I start my official bowel prep, and it scares me, because I get shaky without food, and low blood pressure without salt, and I already have a mobility disability. Then they will knock me out on Monday, and I tend to have a heavy reaction to medications and anesthesia. So none of this makes me comfortable. The actual colonoscopy, that doesn’t scare me. But everything else does.

So tomorrow, unless I experience miraculous healing today, I will be expelling mucus from my lungs and all the poop from my bum.

This Christmas (2024)

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it multiple times this year. 2024 has brought with it profound hopes and joys, and also some challenges and disappointments. I hate when people say “it’s been a good year” or even a “bad year” because our measures of time are such arbitrary concepts.

I would like to take stock of my life not in calendar years but more in marks of what I have achieved in my various stages and ages.

I believe after November’s blood pressure scare we have that under control. I have an appointment to return to the medical fitness program Friday, and have in the last four months successfully lost 4-5 pounds. Considering my affinity for stress eating, the low level of weight loss is not surprising.

Food certainly plays an important role in my heart health as my blood pressure and weight respond clearly and drastically based on my sugar and salt consumption.

Eva had a double ear infection, sore throat, laryngitis and vertigo three-ish weeks ago, and she is still recovering from that– and she has shared with me whatever gunk started her troubles. I had a small fever last Tuesday night and struggled with an excess of clear phlegm and a cough for the last week. I have coughed more and more at night for the last few days, hours each night according to my AppleWatch, and finally expelled some pale yellow mucus and blood from my nose at 5 a.m. this morning. With luck and dreams I can hope that was the “infection,” and perhaps I can start to mend.

Eva and I haven’t fully embraced Christmas in recent years, especially since my father’s death three years ago and the increasingly-distanced behavior of my parental family. But at the same time, despite my health challenging me, trying to grow my business and watching my financial security evaporate, and in general surrendering a lot of items and ideals that were important if not central to me, I find myself closer to peace than I have been in a long time.

I meet people every day who, in some cases, inspire me, and in other cases, remind me who I don’t want to be. I still spend too much time mourning the past and not enough celebrating the future.

I had coffee with an impressive woman last week– Lenore Kantor– at Plants & Coffee.

Let me share with you these holiday-themed photos I took there.

When one is battling health problems or illness, especially at the holidays, it offers so much time to think undistracted by the work we just don’t have the mental or physical energy to do.

And in my case, I have explored some of Roku TV’s nostalgic offerings for Generation X (and earlier). I have watched Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Diff’rent Strokes and Pink Panther recently while AppleTV offered me a free month so I am binging La Maison.

Unexplained falls and bad timing

I can’t even begin to articulate what I am feeling these days because what I’m feeling is a range of highs and lows.

I’m editing books, planning presentations, talking with writers about their books—- and still dealing with blood pressure fluctuations and high heart rate notifications.

We haven’t had heat so far this winter and the outdoor temperature this week has been highs of the low thirties and lows in the twenties. The interior of my home has been 45 degrees in the morning.

With any luck, the part for the furnace will arrive tomorrow and my repair is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

And even that, I handled well. Until I fell this morning. A real fall. An unexplained fall.

My AppleWatch didn’t even notice and I hit my head hard enough I scared myself.

I had made myself a beautiful egg and yellow pepper omelette that ended up on the floor with me. I ate it anyway.

I turned to carry my plate into the dining room and stumbled and went down as if I didn’t even at feet beyond my ankles.

I felt so vulnerable for the rest of the day I curled up on the couch and alternated between episodes of 1,000 Pound Sisters and The Sopranos.

Delight at Cellar Beast Winehouse

Last night, I had the pleasure of accompanying Darrell Parry and William D. Prystauk to a reading at Cellar Beast Winehouse in Andreas, Pa., not that far from where I had breakfast at Bowmanstown Diner earlier this week (in the Palmerton/Lehighton/ Carbon County region). We joined Liz Rosen and JZ Nieves as part of a book-and-wine pairing event that celebrated this unique winehouse as well as our writing.

Darrell opened the evening with some poetry.

Bill went next with the opening of his novel, The Hanging Girl. The wines began with German-inspired white and progressed all the way to a dark, rich red called “Dark Angel” that the host paired with my reading from my second novel, Courting Apparitions.

I wish I could have seen the sign language interpretation of my excerpt as it was the only reading of the evening to contain a very sultry scene– in addition to the appearance of a ghost.

Darrell ended up buying a bottle of Dark Angel, and it was an impressive evening, both because of the organization, participation and the ambiance of the venue AND the excellence of all of the wines.

Tell me to keep going.

I feel unseen and unheard. I’m cold and I’m tired. And I have a headache.

The cold is easy to explain but not easy to remedy. My furnace started acting odd last winter, and I invested more than $600 into a possible fix that was nothing more than a guess and a bandaid– and it worked for last winter.

My heat is on 58-degrees right now, because I keep my heat low to save money and it doesn’t go up to 62 degrees until I’m consistently cold. And it only goes higher than 62 on special occasions.If you balk at those numbers, then you’ve never been poor.

Today the furnace refuses to work in any capacity. I called my heating people and they said they could come tomorrow, but I have special plans tomorrow (reading– the wine and book pairing at Cellar Beast Winehouse in Andreas, Pa. Buy tickets here) and I don’t want the stress of knowing if I’ll be without heat this winter. Because the furnace might really be dead. I’m hoping maybe it’s the thermostat, but that might be delusional thinking on my part.

[Help Angel heat her house this winter! Buy Parisian Phoenix books! 30 to choose from! Here’s our affiliate store on Bookshop.org— https://bookshop.org/shop/ParisianPhoenix— where you can support me, my authors and your favorite independent bookstore all at the same time without leaving your house, which I hope is warm!]

They are coming Tuesday afternoon, at my request.

If you follow this blog, you may already know that I signed up and paid for the Thrive Medical Fitness program at St. Luke’s Hospital.

Past blogs regarding this:

How I learned about the program

Medical Fitness Intake, part 1

Medical Fitness Intake, part 2

So, when I got home last night, I tracked my blood pressure for the hour after I returned and watched it come down to normal. Then, I ate Wing Stop. I had previously eaten about 850 calories that day with about 50 grams of protein and yeah, when Eva said she was starving and wanted Wing Stop I ordered it. I got a chicken sandwich, 5 boneless wings and an order of the fried corn with parmesan instead of the seasoning. I hoped I wouldn’t eat it all, but I did, which brought my protein totals for the day to around 125 grams and my calories to probably slightly more than 2,550.

My weight this morning did not change. My heart rate also appeared normal. My blood pressure before my beta blocker dose was 116/84. I skipped my morning coffee, drank a glass of electrolyte water and even wore my AppleWatch in the shower to see how my heart rate responded to the hot water.

At the doctor’s office, my weight had not changed. My heart rate was 77! That’s so ridiculously good for me as usually when I walk in the door it skyrockets. My blood pressure was 150/96. And they still have my height listed as 5′ 3″ which makes me obese. I’m 5′ 4″!

I saw a doctor that was not my own, and while he seemed like a very nice person, he didn’t see or hear me. He spent five minutes with me and prescribed a new medication. My history shows I have an issue with anxiety and my blood pressure, and I’m not saying I don’t have an issue, but no one seems to care that my blood pressure only escalates when I am outside of my house!

And I mentioned I struggle with orthostatic hypotension so I’m really concerned about changing my medications.

I am waiting for the pharmacy to fill the meds, and I made the follow-up nurse visit, but I also made an appointment with my cardiologist. But it’s hard to take care of yourself when you don’t have the same financial resources or the same “normal” body as everyone else.

I decided to cheer myself up and do something positive I made a coffee bar at the end of my desk.

Did I just flunk out of fitness?

I started my new fitness journal Monday and have been making good choices, tracking my activity and walking the dog everyday.

Each day my number of steps increases by about 500 and today I made it up an extra bend of stairs before I was out of breath– Nan lives on the third floor and I always take the stairs instead of the elevator.

I’ve reduced my caffeine intake, resumed taking my beta blocker and have taken my baclofen regularly. Today was my second try to finish my intake for the Thrive Medical Fitness Program at St. Luke’s Hospital. I even arrived 15 minutes early, used the restroom and sat in the waiting room imagining petting my cat, Fog, and listening to his purr.

They wouldn’t let me finish the intake on Monday because of high blood pressure and heart rate and I was determined to do everything I could to come in on target.

Well.

My heart rate passed.

My blood pressure, despite several attempts by more than one person over a course of 20 minutes, did not. They asked several times if I had any symptoms– and I said no because I didn’t. They asked several times. And the last time my trainer emphasized if you have any symptoms at all I will accompany you to the E.R. right now. They let me go home with a promise that I would call my primary care physician and go talk to them tomorrow. And they instructed me to take my blood pressure as soon as I got home.

My numbers there were: 180/120, 180/117 and 160/110.

I came home and the numbers had fallen: 123/91, then 116/82, and finally 115/71.

I went to the bench outside the hospital and called my primary care physician from there. The office is on the way home from the hospital and it was only 4:30 p.m. so if they had concerns they could have me come immediately to the office or stay at the hospital.

I have an appointment for 8:45 a.m. tomorrow.

And the staff at the fitness center thanked me for being so flexible and understanding, acknowledging that the whole situation must be frustrating, but getting angry about it won’t help me– or my blood pressure.

Honestly, I think my body is just anxious about being in/near the hospital.

So we’ll see what my primary care physician’s office says tomorrow.

Fitness strike out

I had my intake for the Thrive medical fitness program at St. Luke’s Hospital. I did not finish all of the required testing because my heart rate and blood pressure were too high.

But let’s back up. Perhaps things aren’t as “all or nothing” as I feel right now– I feel like in many areas of my life I am “failing” or “losing” and the reality is that life is more complex than that.

I was soooo excited to join the Thrive Medical Fitness program, and I still am. The staff seems pleasant and supportive.

And I wanted to do stuff.

No doing stuff yet.

I had a 5:30 appointment for the intake, and I was 100% honest on the form about my habits and my medical conditions. After all, it’s a hospital-sponsored program so they have access to at least my medical history anyway. So I told the staff member about my fall history, about my bout of afib, about my orthostatic hypotension, my anemia, and my increase in spasticity.

And I quickly learned that due to all of these conditions, I will not be allowed to workout independently at the facility. I will have to make an appointment and work out with one of their trainers for every workout.

Now, to start, I can see this being prudent, and I hope I will prove I am not a danger to myself and be allowed to drop by and workout. But, if not, my new home gym is almost ready.

So, I accept this. I even try to see the nice staff person’s small gestures to my elbow as I step on and off the fancy scale as kindness. She does not know me, so she has to be cautious. But it would be a delicious story if I fell off a scale. And hurt myself. At the hospital.

Which reminds me of the time I fell down the stairs at the hospital, but that’s another story. You can read that story here.

Then, they took my heart rate and my blood pressure. Both were really high and would not come down.

Part of that might have been because I did not know they were in the basement, and even when I made it to the basement, they were tucked in a corner that had me walking around the whole building for a while. Then I got myself worked up when my anxiety was already doing overtime– I’m thinking a lot about how I’m going to heat the house this winter, what my next strategy will be for maintaining the publishing company’s income, and facing the holidays, a time of year when I typically feel the absence of my family.

So today I started taking my beta blocker again as I initiated my Clever Fox fitness journal. I filled out all the spaces regarding measurements, goals and trackers. Maybe it will force me to be introspective and keep track of my own behavior.

And meanwhile, I have taken Bean Dog for several walks this week. Our first was on last week, and it lasted less than five minutes. We walked halfway up our block and back, just to see how she behaved for me and if she would walk with me and leave Eva behind. The second walk was straight down our street almost 1.5 blocks and straight back, for a total of nine minutes.

Yesterday we walked around the whole block, which took 12 minutes, but about 8 minutes in, Bean spotted our neighbor’s pitty jumping at the fence literally within view of our house and I was afraid to try to get her home. In trying to grab her heel-level handle, I scraped my knuckles on the asphalt and decided to just sit there and wait for Eva to rescue us or for the dog to calm herself.

Today we walked two full blocks (15 minutes) after Eva trained me to use a hands-free leash with a bungee-style lead to absorb some of the force. Eva hooked it to the traditional leash so if she started to react badly I could brace my body weight and use more of my power to balance the dog, and then regain my control by taking the traditional leash back.

We have not had to do that, but it’s good practice and good exercise for both of us.

PS– I return to the medical fitness center tomorrow to resume my intake testing.

Energized

I’m energized in a way I haven’t been for a long time. And hopeful.

And once again I find myself greater for a strong, smart medical team that genuinely listens and cares.

It’s been a while since I had a medical update, and part of the reason for that is because of my high deductible medical plan that makes it more expensive to receive care. I am a big proponent of high deductible plans– because with an HSA they can save a lot of money, but I do not have an HSA. My current plan has out-of-pocket costs that are twice that of my previous plan. I’ll be paying $120 a month for the next two years to pay off my MRI from earlier this year.

And you haven’t seen any fitness entries because I haven’t worked out in a very long time. My coach at Apex Training took a hiatus for a family emergency and has not returned, and I no longer have the money. I have a feeling the guys at my gym would offer me some sort of deal– they have always been reasonable people, but life is so uncertain I just didn’t have it in me.

And food has also been an issue. As my food budget is also highly restricted.

These realities, especially for someone proud and stubborn like myself, are a constant reminder that it is not easy to be poor and take care of yourself, even without factoring in a disability. I believe having a mobility disability, which in my case is diplegia spastic cerebral palsy, makes me more away of how important diet and exercise are.

We all hear it all the time– that all of the body’s systems work together and that food, rest, and exercise provide the foundation and potential to fix a lot of problems. And in my case it’s easy to see the impact. It’s been about six months since I stopped working out, and my spasticity has reached a new level of inconvenience. I have spent much of my life in jobs that did not involve sitting behind a desk, and that, coupled with the lack of gym routine, has taught my muscles that we sit. And when my muscles learned something, they remember.

I need to start healthier routines. Eva is remodeling our garage and will move all of our weights, resistance bands and other equipment out there. And I am walking more. I get what I consider reasonable step counts about three times a week. I might even start walking the dog.

But about two weeks ago, I had my second episode of crippling muscle spasms after a day of walking. And I walked with a cane for a day. That also drove the reality home. I have never used a cane before.

In the midst of all of this, once I realized how out-of-shape and out-of-breath I was, I scheduled an appointment with my neurologist/physiatrist. This was a couple months ago and she couldn’t see me until Dec. 31 at 4 p.m. But they put me on a cancellation list and moved me to November 6.

My doctor arrived and immediately called me stylish, not knowing I picked my clothes to keep my weight the lightest possible and when she noticed my red boots, I had to let her know that they were on the floor next to my desk and I didn’t have it in me to look for other shoes. (But later in the visit, she acknowledged how my choice of boots also makes walking easier and the ankle height of the boot gives me more support. All part of why I love boots!)

She also commented about how long my hair has gotten, at which point I had to remind her that we hadn’t seen each other in more than a year. “Really?!?” she said. I nodded. (We set up another appointment for April so that doesn’t happen again.)

She gave me an exam and noted all my muscle tightness and had me walk around the office for her. And we talked about my hopes to improve my habits– because I know my role in my situation accounts for most of my everyday problems.

(And my cardiologist never got back to me about going off my beta blocker, but I did stop taking it. I have seen more incidents of high heart rate, but nothing significant or repeated, and most of it can be explained by diet or exercise. Eat a Little Caesars pizza? End up with a racing heartbeat. Do short stints of rapid walking? Also high heart rate.)

She suggested I resume taking my baclofen regularly and to up the dose to 10 mg if needed, up to 3 times per day. I took it regularly while working in the warehouse and have been taking it now when I feel I “need” to.

As she made a written note of all my lower body muscle issues, she asked if I might be interested in an ambulatory referral to a medical fitness exercise specialist at St. Luke’s Anderson Fitness & Sports Performance Center. “Sure,” I said.

They called me while I was driving home.

And when I learned it was $99 for the three-month fitness program and that insurance might even pay it, I really was glad I decided to go see my doctor. I made an appointment for intake evaluation on Monday and maybe soon I’ll be using my Clever Fox Fitness journal.

This is what the website says:

Medically-based exercise programs for those with a chronic disease and / or disability. Designed to increase exercise tolerance and enhance functional capacity. For all ages.
Join us and get ready to THRIVE!
$99 three-month fitness memberships are available to all patients and clients referred from St. Luke’s Weight Management, Physical Therapy at St. Luke’s, St. Luke’s Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation, St. Luke’s Physicians and St. Luke’s Oncology.

https://www.slhn.org/fitness/fitness