I have made some progress on healing the wound in my upper left thigh. After three surgeries, and eight weeks of negative pressure wound therapy, the wound has nearly healed. I am no longer using the wound vac. My physician at the Mercy Hospital Wound Clinic has given me the green light to resume a moderate physical conditioning program.
I still have a problem with a ulcer in my middle right toe and am wearing an orthopedic shoe (a fancy sandal) on my right foot nearly all the time. My local podiatrist was treating the wound up until October, and now the toe wound is being treated at the Mercy Hospital Wound Clinic.
I am now walking 2 miles each day. This week, I am resuming weight training three days a week at the Tehama Family Fitness Center. I am doing taijiquan and qigong practices, and have resumed a gentle yoga practice two days a week. All of these physical conditioning activities are being done at a "light" to "moderate" intensity. I am starting rather gently.
Surprisingly, since July, I have been fortunate in not having much pain in my left leg. Discomfort, yes. Limping, yes. Pain, low.
Surprisingly, since July, I have been fortunate in not having much pain in my left leg. Discomfort, yes. Limping, yes. Pain, low.
My nutrition program is intended to increase protein intake to improve my chances for wound healing, and I have a caloric intake suitable to bring my bodyweight to 240 pounds.
I have been a non-insulin dependent diabetic for 13 years. This chronic disease does complicate my exercise, medication and nutrition program, but is, at present, manageable. I take glipizide and metaformin daily.
My immediate objectives are to gradually regain my aerobic conditioning, strength, and flexibility lost to the inactivity and longer recovery process for my leg wound, and to resume teaching Taijiquan, Qigong and Yoga on January 2, 2012.
You've had a long haul the past few months; give your "comeback" plenty of time, as well!
ReplyDeleteNot to compare apples to oranges, at all, but your situation reminded me of another man's, which occurred many decades ago. Perhaps it will seems interesting to you:
"I recently had an ailment that kept me in more or less constant severe pain for several months. Although the pain was intense, it was limited to my legs and did not affect my vital functions. Moreover, at no time was it possible to believe my life was threatened. For the first two or three weeks, my life remained generally the same. Certain that the pain would soon pass, I was "brave." I abjured pain-killing drugs, I complained and joked, I stayed away from doctors. I drank in sympathy from others. I actually admired myself for the way I was bearing up.
"But the pain did not get better; it got worse, and eventually my composure dissolved. I became frightened, and during the next two months I tried every doctor and healer I could find and every nostrum I could lay my hand on. They all failed, but each time I felt sure I was on the track of what was wrong and how to fix it -- and each time panic set in when the timetable broke down.
"Gradually, I began to notice something important out of the corner of my eye. I saw that my efforts were being expended not simply to stop the pain or to become well, but to get back my habits. I discovered that I loved my habits -- of eating and sleeping, sitting and walking, talking on the phone, meeting people, reading, laughing, shouting. When I took pain-killing drugs (which I began to do, in great amounts), I was relieved not simply because the pain lessened, but because my habits returned. I learned that I depend on my habits to feel alive.
"I do not want to appear naive. I had certainly always known how disturbing it is to have one's habitual ways interfered with for any reason. But I am speaking about something different here, something about human nature which i had never heard of before. When I was in pain, I was actually a freer human being. My habits no longer compelled me; I was no longer lost in them, I could see them and sense them as though they were children calling out to me not to abandon them. But I could not bear this freedom because there was one habit that not even the constant pain could dislodge: the habitual feeling that I know what to do, the sense one has in all circumstances day and night that I am doing the right thing, or at least the best thing possible.
"And I think in this everyone is alike. Even in the most difficult situations when action is blocked on every side and I become limp, there is still the accompanying sense that this is what I must do. Even the most "passive" among us feel this beneath the surface of their lives. This feeling, this sense of agency, is something very small, but since it is I, it is also something very big. This habit is "myself." It is the ego."
-- excerpted from A Sense of the Cosmos, by Jacob Needleman
Walt,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the quotation from Jacob Needleman. I agree with his observation that "This feeling, this sense of agency, is something very small, but since it is I, it is also something very big. This habit is "myself." It is the ego."
One "habit" of mine is walking. I regularly walk 4 miles on a lovely quiet country road. I consistently walk 4 days each week. Not being able to do this like I did before really disrupted my sense of self.
My routines, my habits, my interacting constructively with all that is Not I, is what is really me.
Mike
Taiji and qigong are good for you. Balance them with getting in contact with your inner man. And you look great in the pose! Have you looked deeply into your own eyes? What do you see?
ReplyDeleteOrdinary Malaysian,
ReplyDeleteModerate exercise, and Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong qualify, is essential to recovery from health setbacks.
Most of the time we never look into our own eyes. We can see our body, but not our own face (sans mirror). But when I do look ... an old man with a pleasant smile.
Cheers,
Mike