The recovery continues to be slow, but steady. I'm at least not getting stricken with anything else to put me a few steps backwards thus far. I'm still getting exhausted too easily, along with dizziness/light-headedness, laboured breathing, and a wildly pounding heart, but level of activity needed to reach those signs of pulmonary fatigue is gradually increasing each day. It's unfortunate and really aggravating that these are the only symptom barometers I have to indicate to myself as to whether or not I'm healing. It sucks that I have to push myself to those levels each and every day and measure how long it takes to reach and recover from such stress periods for me to figure out if I'm actually making any progress. It's so ridiculous. It's like being given a hammer to smash your fingers with as your only option to use to tell whether or not you have any feeling in your hand. It's counter-intuitive to push one's self closer to the edge of collapse, but I still manage to do it.
It was a more vigorous day than I should have allowed it to become; but snow fall warnings were being issued again, and I chose to be practical with the time and shopped a bit after going to the medical lab. Today, it took me almost an hour to do the sort of shopping task which ordinarily takes me 15 to 20 minutes to do for the same amount of goods that I ended up getting. The excursion today has left me really bushed, but it was worth it. The past stretch of eating soup several days in a row was getting pretty monotonous meal-wise. I couldn't resist the chance to find some delicacies that are more flavourful, and yet such that they can be prepared on the lighter side, which is more agreeable with my current state of appetite. I did it before this next predicted big dump of snow comes blowing in tomorrow. It was probably a mistake to be trying to tour through a place as large as the Superstore for groceries given the way I felt afterward, but it was close to the lab, there was heated underground parking, and they had what I wanted all under one roof.
I'm bothered by the fact that enough snow has fallen for cross-country skiing, and more is coming; but I'm not fit enough for that sort of rigour yet, and I may miss this season entirely. The next paragraph is a jump ahead into Friday.
Today is Black Friday in the states, but it's White Out Friday here. The snow is arriving, the result of the wet Pacific air jabbing its way across the mountains and far inland, mixing with the descending Arctic chill. I walked the dog outside at 5:45 AM, just because I couldn't sleep. The random yet necessary rest periods splattered throughout the course of a day, and no set routine of things throughout these past couple of weeks have been really messing up my sleep patterns. It wasn't exactly a bright or sane thing to do: for the dog and I to walk the streets alone in the dark in inclement weather with my defective lungs. However, it's better than taxing myself more with trying to tramp through a few more centimeters after an extra three hours of accumulation; and when it's expected later to blow up to 50 km/h gusting with increasing wind chill and whiteout conditions, all just for the sake of waiting for daylight. They say that this will all last until midnight, so today is turning into a total write-off for getting some relief from going shack-whacky or hoping to get stuff done outside of home. The doctor just phoned to tell me that my INR levels are a little high and we readjusted dosages. I should be taking it easy for today anyway.
The big American marketing phenomenon of Black Friday is oozing over our border into our own shops and stores. I had gave thought to checking out some Black Friday sales for tech stuff, specifically seeking out a hugely discounted big-ass external hard drive for network backups, but I'm going to let that pass today. I honestly don't think it will be worth the trouble. This wretched weather may actually be useful in dissuading me from impulse buying any other tech stuff out of this burgeoning madness to cure boredom, like an Xbox One console, or a super-mega home theatre system that I can't really afford. I'm hoping that the sale will extend beyond door-crasher specials for today, and will be available throughout the weekend as things simmer down. As much as I am getting sick of being stranded in here, I just have to turn my head 90 degrees to look outside through my living room window, and turn back again to read, binge-watch TV, and surf the net, and be thankful again that I don't have anything so pressing happening to make me be out there on a day like today, and to learn to be content with what I have.
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