It’s a clich

I graduated from cardiopulmonary rehab Thursday after 36 visits. The crew (Pam, Chuck, Nancy and various visitors from the fifth floor of Bay Medical Center) took good care of me.

Nancy’s convinced they restored my confidence, and Chuck says I’m ready to face the next 50 years or so, just keep exercising and eating right and taking my prescriptions.

They started me with a 20-minute routine on the stationary bike, treadmill and arm ergometer, and slowly added time and resistance and an additional machine to my exercise “prescription.” (Like my classmates, I wore a portable heart monitor in a little white bib during the workout. That’s what you see in the photo above.)

They also provided loads of information on maintaining a heart-healthy diet, exercise, cholesterol, and simply understanding what’s going on in my chest. Not to mention plenty of emotional support.

By Thursday, I’d progressed to a 44-minute routine, and was a sweating mess when standing there to receive my certificate of completion as the graduation march played on Chuck’s CD player.

This is not a unique story. Hundreds of people could say the same about the program, but they don’t have blogs to tell you about it.

Be sure to see my Sunday column in the Lifestyle section on Dec. 31, New Year’s Eve, for more about what all this means to me.

Today I walked into the Heart Support Group’s Christmas luncheon. I brought fruit salad.

Actually, I brought my wife, who had made the fruit salad. We were, by far, the youngest in attendance — let me be more accurate and say I was the youngest CABG (Coronary Artery Bypass Graft). I happen to know for a fact that plenty of people younger than me COULD have been there for just as legitimate a reason as I.

Anyway, we were heartily welcomed. Lunch was tasty. The fellowship was warm. Several people shared their stories with me, of how they were trucking along without a glitch until one day …

I will be back next month. (The group meets on the second Thursday of each month at HealthPlex at lunchtime. I have it good authority that they have sandwiches.)

Here’s a photo of the crew:

I’ll tell you more and share information as I get acquainted.

For more about the local activities of the American Heart Association, click here.

Click here to read my previous blog entries, including many about my recovery from bypass surgery.

Peace.

It’s difficult to get used to being unable to do many of the things I used to take for granted. Simple lifting and carrying of relatively light weights remains beyond my ability, as the pressure on my sternum every time I pick up something reminds me that I still have healing to do.

That means I couldn’t carry the Christmas tree into the house, or fetch the totes full of ornaments, or carry piles of packages for wrapping. And you’d think I’d be okay with that — less trouble for me, right? — but it just isn’t that simple.

Climbing on a two-step ladder to hang lights on the porch, reaching overhead for extended periods of time, keeping my balance — all of this is barely within my capabilities. The word “frustration” only touches on the mental/emotional part of this. Try these words: angry, embarrassed, depressed, tentative, stubborn, helpless — the emotions shift with the wind and whatever I’m finding that I can’t accomplish on my own.

The doctors and nurses assure me that this is temporary. That I’m doing great, getting better all the time, and shortly will be back to my old self — or better, as I have better heart function than before the bypass. It just takes time, they remind me. Someday soon, a whole day will pass without a twinge or a pain in the chest, or even a passing thought about the surgery. Soon, I’ll be up to full speed and strength — and better than before.

Meanwhile, I’m reminded constantly that I’m not there yet. I woke up today with pain in my chest — not a heart pain, but a chest-tissue pain, a reminder of yesterday’s “arm ergometer” workout at my cardio rehab class. I thought about staying in bed. Now I sit here at work, doing nothing more physically challenging than writing, and can feel the discomfort stretch and pull across my chest.

I write about these things because I know others have been through it or are facing it. Maybe someone reading this has a loved one that recently went through heart surgery and this will give them insight into what their loved one is experiencing. Because it’s important to know you’re not alone.

Especially at Christmastime, when you see what others are doing and you may feel less involved than in the past, or you may be depressed about what’s happened to you and cynical toward all this “joy to the world” stuff. Or you think you should be stronger than you are, physically and emotionally.

I hear that’s to be expected. In fact, I’m told, you can expect your emotions to remain out of whack for a while. For sappy songs and sad movies to activate the waterworks, which makes you especially vulnerable this time of year.

Peace.

It looks different from overhead - the face of a girl with a pearl earring forms within a careful gridwork pattern, Neptune crashes upward from out of the earth, and a fire god flickers into being upon a parking lot.

Across the block, two teachers breathe life into a menagerie of animals and a member of Duran Duran, and further down the street, a modern Mona Lisa coalesces on the pavement near a message about prayer in schools.
I’m on the roof of the Visual Arts Center of Northwest Florida, standing in the brisk breeze and warm sunshine of a Friday morning, trying to catch magic on video. Below me, the Modannaro/Emerald Bay Street Painting Festival takes shape on concrete and asphalt surfaces. With chalk and fingers, cloths and rubbing materials, a moment of creation gets stretched, molded and blended.
Pardon me if it all seems too mystical, but I have just clambered up a dark passage into the light of a new morning, a warm sun, a cold wind whipping the trees and scattering artists’ supplies. Fire and water symbols look up at me from the earth, and past me into a clear blue sky.
(Later, my wife will berate me for my rooftop excursion: What if I had a dizzy spell, or couldn’t catch my breath, or pulled a muscle in my chest climbing the ladder? What if a gust of wind had knocked me off my already precarious balance? She’s right, of course, as I’m still recovering from heart surgery. But it was fun to do, and how often can you say that about work? And more so, it was about the art.)
It’s all so transitory, you understand? The art, the lives it touches. The chalk will last - how long? Days at best? It will fade fast under foot traffic and car tires, and faster still if the sky gives up its water, drowning Neptune and the fire god alike, drowning the menagerie without an ark to save it.
Standing on the ground, the art is too big to take in all at once. You have to step back and walk around it. But from up here on the rooftops, from this heightened perspective, it all seems so small. You can watch the effort of several artists at once, and see where their work is taking them in a single glance. And even though it won’t last - you know it can’t last - you were there and you saw what they did, and it was worthwhile.
Peace.

—

View a photo gallery of the street artists and their work here.

View a video of the artists at work here.

I took my nitro for the first time on Friday.
I’ve been afraid of the day that would happen, when the various pains I still feel in my chest would make me think that, okay, it’s time to take something to save your life. Nobody wants to need nitro, and I’m the sort who doesn’t want to take any kind of medicine that he doesn’t need. But those of us who have had heart problems carry the tiny pills around for special occasions.
Nitro causes your veins to dilate and thus increases the flow of oxygen-carrying blood cells. Unfortunately, it also can cause a pounding headache. You don’t want to take it if you don’t have to, but you also don’t want to fail to take it if you need it. You fear how your body will react to taking the drug.
It’s a strange way of living. After heart surgery, you gauge every twinge, pull, air pocket, ache, discomfort or burning sensation; you wonder if this is only indigestion or a muscle ache caused by your cardio rehab. Maybe you’re just tired. Maybe you’re catching a bug.
The problem is knowing when is the right time.
Friday, I completed my first full week back at work full-time, a schedule that included two visits to rehab and one doctor’s visit (if not for the doc that day, the schedule would’ve included three rehab days). At the doc’s office, I got a flu shot and a pneumonia shot.
Anyway, by week’s end, I was tired. I was aching. By the time I went home Friday, my chest hurt - it hurt when I turned the steering wheel, when I pushed against the front door, when I twisted to take off my jacket - but then so did my arms and legs, an ache in the bones.
Tylenol was no help. The pains got worse as the evening came on, and I couldn’t tell so much where the pain radiated from - just that I wanted it to stop.
So I took the nitro, thinking that if the pain in my chest and arms and legs was heart-related, then it would get better. I placed the pill under my tongue and felt it dissolve. I swallowed. After several seconds, I felt warmth radiating out from my torso, and then the headache hit.
The pain didn’t get better all at once, miraculously, as it should have if it reacted to the nitro. But it did ease during the evening; my wife took my temp and discovered I was running a low-grade fever.
So did I physically NEED to take the nitro? No, most likely not.
But did I need the nitro for a different reason? Yes: To reassure me that I was not having another problem with my heart.
Will I take it again? Yes.
The problem is knowing when is the right time.

Peace.

**

For more information about heart disease and treatments, go to
www.americanheart.org

For more entries about my recent heart attack, bypass surgery and recovery, go to my blog index.

Other people wear their hearts on their sleeves. I wear mine here.
Maybe I’ve been a little too aware of my heart in recent months, but when I sat to write down this week’s column ideas, this list was foremost in my thoughts - and these are some of the things that warmed my heart in the past week.
… Messages and comments on MySpace. Or my blog. Or e-mail. It’s like when you first moved away from home and you didn’t know anybody in town and you rushed to check the mail every day to see if someone had written you. Remember that? The thrill of seeing something other than “Occupant” on the address label? It’s almost just like that.
… Laura’s visit. She chose me for her team, which is pretty awesome. And she didn’t point and say “circus freak” beforehand. She’s one of my son’s friends who calls me “Dad,” which started out as a joke and sort of stuck, and you can’t get much higher praise than that. She moved off to Tallahassee for school last summer, and it was good to see her this week.
… Hearing my mother laugh on the telephone.
… A visit from two of my nieces (and their mom). I got to show off all of the video stuff I’ve been doing lately, and they worked on bouquets for an upcoming wedding. They bring a different sense of humor to the house, and that’s almost always welcome.
… Hugs.
… Hearing how good “The Laramie Project” is. Because I know most of the students (and staff) involved, I have a sense of family pride in hearing them praised. If you’ve missed it, the final show is today at 2:30 p.m. in the Amelia Center Theater “black box” lab at Gulf Coast Community College. Admission is $10, but GCCC students and staff get in free. Seating is limited, so arrive early. And be aware it’s a show for mature audiences.
(You can also catch a video of rehearsals at newsherald.com)
… The cooler weather, ironically enough. I love jacket weather. For one thing, it means people will stop asking me, “Aren’t you hot in that jacket?”
… A visit from two of my summertime “Othello” compatriots, who recently have moved to Orlando for school and work. (Apparently, it’s been a good week for visitations.) They stopped by the house to say “hi” on their way back out of town and ended up spending hours with us.
… Talking with my wife as we fed the turtles and fish in the creek behind our house. You know what that’s the definition of?
Peace.

Last weekend, I relaxed in a rocking chair on the balcony of the Witherspoon Inn in Apalachicola and breathed the serenity of an early autumn morning.

The air was light, the temperature brisk - soon to be betrayed by rising summer heat. Neighbors passed on the street below, making their way by bicycle or golf cart or truck or convertible.
Bright orange wings of Monarch butterflies fluttered among red and pink blooms of hibiscus and oleander bushes across the way. The flashes of orange dipped and soared, catching the golden rays of the morning sun as they sampled the dew-wet flowers.

Two squirrels played chase around the heritage oak that spread its heavy limbs in front of the balcony. They skittered in rising spirals around the base of the tree, then along thick branches topped by brown lichen and draped with Spanish moss.
An acorn, or something of that size, tapped and tumbled down the metal roof.
Talking with Sandy, the innkeeper, was like an introduction to everyone in town and a review of the economic impact of Tallahassee politics. When she was done, we knew where to hang out on a Friday night, who was renovating their old houses (and how), where to avoid the gators lurking in dark water beside public sandbars, and we learned about the spreading influence of meth in small towns.
She offered us the use of her bicycles, but my recent heart problems precluded that sort of recreation.
We went for a stroll in Lafayette Park instead, where a young family walked with their dog and earlier we had seen a wedding party rehearsing in the gazebo. We traversed what remained of the park pier - wave action from last year’s hurricanes had cut the span in half - and we took pictures around the gazebo.
We shot more photos off Commerce Street and Avenue E, where again the Monarchs danced among the dandelions, and the stores mixed age-darkened antiques, brighter art and varieties of old junk.

A Native American legend says that if you catch a butterfly, you should whisper your secret wish to it and then set it free. Butterflies are mute, so they can tell your secret only to the Great Spirit, who will grant your wish because you freed the butterfly. Last weekend, we captured butterflies only with the camera lens, but I still whispered a secret wish, just in case.

Peace.

The slow process of cardiac rehab continues.

This week, I’ve been walking 20 minutes on a treadmill, doing 6 minutes on the arm ergometer, and spinning my wheels on the stationary bike for 14 minutes. Next week, the staff may add some resistance to make me work a little harder. The point of it is to build up the strength and endurance of my heart.

I share the space with a room full of walking and talking cabbages — which is the euphemism for Coronary Artery Bypass Graft, or “CABG.” It’s a room full of people who, only a few years ago, might not have been walking and talking at all if not for advances in heart and stroke research funded in part by the American Heart Association.

The Heart Walk for the American Heart Association will begin at 9 a.m. on Oct. 28 at McKenzie Park. For more information, click here.

According to the website, funds raised through the Heart Walk support research and education programs. Research funded by the American Heart Association has led to lifesaving discoveries such as CPR, various medications, pacemakers, bypass surgery and other surgical techniques to repair heart defects.

Part of rehab is the educational component. We read fact sheets and view videos, and discuss how we’ve applied some of this information in our own lives — topics like stress reduction, exercise, dietary changes — and we discuss dealing with the physical and emotional highs and lows, the good days and bad days that follow a traumatic event like we’ve experienced.

It’s a slow process. But it’s getting better.

Peace.

So I met other survivors today — cabbages all (Coronary Artery Bypass Graft surgery patients, from whence comes “CABG” or “cabbage”).

I was the youngest in the room at Healthplex, where I started my cardiac rehab program today. The staffers taught me how to attach a portable heart monitor, then they took my vitals, and they showed me how to use the machines.

I’ll be there three times a week for 12 weeks, and once each week the workout will be followed by an education session. Today was supposed to be “Heart Healthy Diets,” but instead it was “Benefits of Exercise.”

The object is to increase my range of motion, upper body strength, build that heart muscle back into shape, and just improve my overall health.

Today I spent time on a treadmill, a stationary bike and some kind of hand-crank device. The staff monitered my heart throughout, and took my vitals during and after the session. Each day I’ll do a little more.

We watched AMC’s morning movie while we worked on the machines. By chance, it was “The Great Escape,” in which allied soldiers in a German POW camp dig tunnels to save themselves from the Nazis. I wonder if there’s an analogy I can draw from that — something about clearing the arteries or escaping my fate, maybe.

Or maybe not, as most of the escapees ended up dead by the end of the movie.

Peace.