It hasn't been quite a week since embarking on the journey of an unfat Kathy, but already there's a bit of progress to report.
One of the things Katie (my PCP) asked me to do was either purchase a pedometer or download a step tracker app on my phone. With no confidence at all my phone could handle it (it's pretty much junk), I started the download. Surprise!! It was successful!
Right now there's no official daily step goal. The purpose is for me to learn just how much I walk during a day. Or don't walk. I think these numbers are cause to celebrate! Much of the past 3 years, I was consigned to the space of 1 cushion on a broken down love seat in a house where I didn't want to be and wasn't wanted. There were days I would bet I didn't take 50 steps... So a goal of 1,000 seemed like a challenging starting point. I hit it on day 3 of using the tracker.
Day 1: 609
Day 2: 946
Day 3: 1,121
My revised personal goal is 2,500 steps each day for a week. For my stubby little legs that equates to just barely more than a mile a day.
Another of my health goals is to get off as much medication as possible. I have a thyroid supplement that I will be shackled to like a prisoner with a ball and chain for as long as I live. But all the drugs they put on in the hospital last November are on the table to be eliminated. And I am doing just that! Warfarin is the most recent one to get the boot from my daily schedule. Now there's only a blood pressure med to go!
I am not a willing pill taker. Nor am I very good at it. My philosophy is the only good pill is for someone else.
Katie wanted me to continue the Warfarin for an undefined "a while longer." But I was just physically and mentally done with it. I was perfectly compliant for the 90 days the hospital doctors, specialists in this sort of thing, had said was an adequate course of treatment. And I was experiencing a lot of gastrointestinal distress with it. That's not a really common side effect for Warfarin. If you go digging through the drug literature it's pretty far down the list. I'd researched and tested and there was nothing else in my daily routine to cause gas so painful that sometimes it had me doubled over and multiple times daily violent caustic diarrhea. My poor bumhole was so raw and sore! So I used my favorite word for doctors and said "no" to the suggestion of adding Immodium to my routine to control the side effect. I don't take pills to manage what another pill is doing to me. I swallowed the last pill on Thursday morning. It takes a week for Warfarin to clear your body but already those icky issues are easing. I took my first normal poop in weeks today!
Physical therapy is what Chris (the therapist) coined "pre-hab." We are working on muscle strength and range of motion so that recovering from knee replacement surgery will be easier. This morning we discussed those goals and measured my progress. The two big numbers the surgeon will look for when setting a date for the procedure are how straight I can get it and how far I can bend my knee. Both are measured as degrees. Zero is normal and desirable for a straight knee. Basically, the back of your knee should touch the surface you are laying on. And bent, 110 is optimal. That degree of bend makes things like climbing stairs easy. We took baseline measurements at the assessment 2 weeks ago so today was my fifth session.
Baseline February 17
Flat 11 4
Bent 89 93
To me, these are milestone moments on the journey...
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