Back on the Track!

Back on the Track Victory Pose!

Today I hit up the gym again to work my endurance and muscle mass back up to where it was before the surgery.  This is something I have been working on for the past few weeks (you can see my previous posts for more in depth summaries).  Now that my energy level has shot up it is becoming easier and easier to sustain longer work outs and work on increasing endurance.  Each time I start the session I set personal goals for myself (running this far, making this many laps or walking for this or that amount of time) and I try not only to reach those goals, but to surpass them.

However Building up strength can be frustrating because feeling in shape
does take a bit of time.  For the first few workouts I was surprised by how out of shape I was. Who would have thought not doing anything for approximately four weeks would make you a tad bit on the slow side?  As I exercised during week four and five I felt limited and was worried that I was not going to feel better after the recovery was deemed over. But today things changed!

I have been pushing myself each day to beat my goals, but what made today different was my goal was higher than what I was able to do before the surgery.  If you take a look at November's blog post "So what are the symptoms?" you will see that I was only able to go a mile with very little running.  Throughout the entire walk/run I was completely out of breath and by the end felt extremely tired.  Today, I set a goal to jog at least .2 miles (more than I was doing in that video) and today I beat that goal!  I jogged for over half a mile and walked the rest with very little heavy breathing!  It was AWESOME!

To me, the most wonderful thing about this surgery is I have learned what used to be "I can't" is now "I can! "There is nothing but my personal ability to get in the way of my new goals.  No more intense out of breath breaks due to blood leakage in my lungs.  No more excessive pumping for something that should take half as many beats. My heart is functioning CORRECTLY! Can you tell that I am excited?  Today I finally understood what this treatment means for my future.  I am back on track (literally) and now fully equipped to be the totally healthy person I am.