It has been a week and a day since I came back home from the hospital. Recovery is happening, but very slowly. I've been spending the majority of that time being cooped up and shut in at home like some sort of fart in a jar; lingering around here and feeling like my wits are getting dulled by the staleness of the slow time and my lack of vigour. For the first couple days, I didn't have much of an appetite. Cooking and eating even felt too strenuous. Throughout the past week, the amount of energy/stamina that I seemed to have had for my most active periods during each given day varied between about one sixth and one quarter of that of my regular normal state of health when I compare and assess. The margin line of my daily activity where I start crossing into that red zone and begin to feel the effects of overexertion to my heart and lungs seems to shift each day, and happens so unpredictably: better one day, and then worse the next. The only remedy now is to move slower and take frequent pauses and breaks. Consequently, it takes about twice as long to do even lighter chores and errands that involve walking, repetitive motion, and carrying and moving stuff. My eyes are becoming really fatigued from all the extra reading and staring at screens. This is all getting boring. Ella, as fun as she is, doesn't contribute much to the art of conversation.
I'm trying not to weaken more and stagnate. I give myself some chore or reasonable goal to do each day with some form of progressive intensity. As tempting as it is to save energy and use extra money on processed/pre-packaged snacks and meals, or getting food delivered, I've been committing myself to cook my own meals mostly from scratch. I push myself to get off my butt and get more active with some walking and limb movement exercises. At Day Four after returning home, I began to walk the dog outside and around the half the block by myself; still some light-headedness, speedy heart, and laboured breathing, but nothing too severe. I welcome these chances to get the fresh air, but I still have to inform people when I'm heading out, and I can't yet go as far as my normal usual routes. I'm trying to expand my range though; I just hate how gradual the process has to be. Yesterday was really tiring after running around, because I felt pressured and relegated to do as much as I could to resupply, and get at least some essential tasks done that I needed my car for before the forecasted freezing rain and snow hit us later.
It's bothersome that I have to be all of a sudden so mindful about simple stupid things that I never had to take account of before. For instance, the weather is doling out a spell of freezing rain now, later to be blanketed by snow, which I normally didn't have much concern for. However, now I have to walk outside with more prudence. With me being on anticoagulants, any possible simple slips and falls on ice that I would have just simply shook off before are made more dangerous and potentially life-threatening due to the greatly increased risk of internal bleeding from such impacts. Now that I've cleared aside all the tasks that I needed to do with what little energy had, I'm now going to start using the treadmill downstairs in the rec room to have some means of measuring my progress and temper myself up. It's a handy option to have when the ice on the streets outside gets too treacherous. Not that I have the inclination or energy for it, but contact sports are a definite no-no. I never did bruise very easily before, but now with me being on Warfarin the least little hard bump/pinching pressure make me bruise like an overripe peach. The area surrounding my stomach around the injection spots where I was giving myself Tinzaparin looks like some weird black/purple/brown Rorschach ink blot. I'm glad, at least for now, that the last of the injections was yesterday.
I'll hopefully know more about how I am to proceed onward from here after I see the doctor next Monday.
Surprisingly, there is not much out there on the Internet regarding the aftercare and recovery for survivors of pulmonary embolisms; which is actually fine because I'm suffering from too much information overload already as it is. The best website I think I found so far is THE CLOT SPOT (www.clotspot.com), although I wish I could glean something more definitive from it pertaining to my specific case.
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