My next podcast is going to be about cardiac rehab. To be honest, I’ve just been so busy with work and life that I haven’t had the time to put the episode together. To tide us over until then, I decided to post some of the photos Carol took of me during one of my early rehab sessions.

In general, I go to rehab three times a week, spending about an hour and a half there each time. While there, I’ll spend about fifty minutes doing aerobic exercise (stationary bike, NuStep, treadmill, and arm machine) and twenty minutes or so lifting weights. During the whole time, I’ll have a heart monitor attached so the nurses can keep tabs on my heart activity. So far, I seem to be handling everything well — at least, that’s what the nurses tell me.

Speaking of nurses, Angela is great at offering encouragement and keeping the atmosphere upbeat — I haven’t had experience with rehab nurses who do it any other way, but the team at North Florida is great. Here is Angela getting me set up on my least-favorite machine, the arm cycle.

That machine takes some work, and I seem to spend a lot of time concentrating and looking quite serious while I’m turning the hand cranks.

Of course, I have to work my legs, too, and the stationary bike is good for that. At the half-way mark on my time, I let the nurses know and they check my blood pressure. So far everything is looking good — my BP goes up (indicating my heart is working) but not too much, and when they check it one last time before I leave it tends to be slightly lower than when I came in. Today’s check out BP? 100 over 58. Not too bad.

The part that I’ve really been looking forward to is weight-training. I didn’t realize, though, just how weakened I’d become. The photos below show me working with 7-pound dumbs, and by the end of a dozen reps I was ready to put them down. I’m working my way up in both weight and reps, but it’s going to be a while before I’m pushing any sort of serious iron.

I do several exercises including front arm extensions…

and good ‘ol arm curls.

By the time I finish with the routine, I’m ready to sit for a little while, but at least I’m up and moving, getting some exercise and feeling better. I’m to the point of truly looking forward to September, when I get some numbers back on my heart function. I feel like they’ll be good numbers, but the confirmation will be nice.

Podcast to come, but work for revenue comes first, so look for the episode sometime next week.

Categories: Consumer, podcast
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