Slow and steady.
From a day-to-day perspective it is sometimes hard to see my progress, but week-to-week it is quite evident. I can now walk mostly without my cane, although I'm slow and not totally steady. The stairs in the house have shrunk from Everest to a long nasty steep hill. I can do more stuff, and have a greater range of motion, but stamina remains a major problem: there are many more things I can do, but I can only do a very little more of them at a time.
This has been checkup week: my surgeon and cardiologist both say I'm doing great, and test results for the residues of the post-operative complications that had me on a respirator for 11 days were almost as good as they could be. My hands are the one area where there has been the least progress — they still shake a lot. Perhaps next week, when I get to stop a few of my medicines, that might improve.
I still suffer from a lot of aches and pains, mostly muscular; as I move more and differently, every muscle in my body is taking its turn to make its bid for attention. That makes it hard to sleep, and made the night-before-last's multiple interruptions by midnight text messages and phone calls from the UM emergency message system very unwelcome. The messages related to an unprecedented armed robbery of the Starbucks on campus. That's serious stuff, but I don't live on the campus. Plus, it doesn't help to learn now that the info I started receiving by text message at 11:54pm and which ended with a phone call at 12:57 was so late as to be meaningless anyway. I've gone and removed my cell phone from the university's records in order not to be bothered in the future. Perhaps I'll put it back once I start going in to work regularly.
As soon as I have a bit more energy, or my hands get a bit better, I'll start on the many thank you notes I owe, but so far between short walks or bouts of very gentle exercise, I'm lying around like a lump or reading the papers, some blogs, or undemanding books.
