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Old 04-14-2020, 09:50 PM   #98
Kätzchen
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Default Sharing about my journey since this past December

It has been about 4 months since I last shared about my health progress.

During the past couple of months, since the Covid-19 outbreak, my primary doctor's office closed and my therapists office closed, so getting my blood labs for my A1c check and staying connected with my medical team has been troublesome. But both teams (primary doctor and therapist) teamed up to do tele-visits by private phone connections. My primary doctor got me into a private lab for my fasting blood labs and we got good news, that my A1c is stable and going down in range, as they adjust the experimental medication I've been taking for the past year and a half (glipizide). My doctor plans to wean me off it, after other criteria demonstrates that it is possible to not take it anymore. I think that is dependent on the mobility issues I have been working on, for the past 3.5 years.

I faced my fears of falling off my bicycle and rode it for the first time, on December 28th. My sister-in-law gave me a fit bit for Christmas and when I select "Exercise" then click on the bicycle icon, it maps your ride and gives you other interesting details - like your sustaining heart beat, calories burned, how many miles you rode, and a picture of what that looks like. That day, the picture was like a big circular doodle, because I only rode around the parking lot of my sprawling neighborhood complex. When I rode that day, it dawned on me that because I don't have the typical brakes, the kind where you squeeze them on the handle bars? That I had to factor in time to stop because I only have the brakes that you use with the pedals. That can be dangerous, stopping, because I have some agility, but only with more practice will my agility improve.

Like this past two weeks, being home due to the "shelter in place" (stay at home, save lives), I have ventured out for more rides. The first time I went out of the neighborhood was last week, I think. I rode for about 4.8 miles. It took me awhile because it is hilly around here and I can't always pedal up a hill -- it's too hard on my lower back. So I'd get off and walk my bicycle up hills and sometimes down hills because the grade index is too steep. In once case the the grade was about 6%, so I walked my bike up the grade and came home a different route. On the fit bit, it won't record the steps you walk while you are in exercise bicycle mode. The picture of the map shows red lines where you bike, but big gaps if you have to walk your bike. Two days ago, I bicycled 6 miles to a destination that takes about 20 minutes by car. That took 3 hours to do on my bicycle. One way. LOL, I had to take the bus home, that day, because my legs were jelly.

Yesterday and today, I pushed myself to do the complete round trip, even if I had to intermittently walk my bicycle, while riding my route. It took me 6 hours to do a round trip. I am building up my strength still, so I think I will not do that round trip unless I give myself time to acclimate to the rigor of riding that trip. Roundtrip, it's approximately 13.6 miles, altogether. Before my work related accident in 2016, I was riding 22 miles per day (11 miles to work, 11 miles return trip home; 11 miles in one hour; one hour to work, one hour to get home). So, you can see that I am not even doing what I used to do and in the same amount of time, either. But I am working at rebuilding muscle and my ability to tolerate longer rides, little by little. At the rate I am going, it might be next summer before I can do what I used to do before. I am happy with what success I have managed to do on my own. Slow and steady, is the way I am committed to my recovery of health.

Tonight, on my way back home, we had a gorgeous sunset in the west, but as one looked east? We had lenticular clouds hovering over the Cascade range of mountains and the spaceship clouds were pink, as they mounded upward over the snowcapped range of mountain tops. I forget what lenticular clouds mean, but I think it means a change in weather, since we've had beautiful clear skies lately... Maybe in the morning we will have a bank of clouds move in and maybe it might be foggy. But the lenticular clouds were spooky looking tonight, yet so beautiful.

Thanks for sharing the journey with me as I continue to make progress.

K.

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Last edited by Kätzchen; 04-14-2020 at 10:02 PM. Reason: typo correction, lol
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