Hairs by Megan McCormack, photo by Sheena Laine Honeycutt
A little chart, why not, of my progress thus far:
| week of | WORK | Train | Nutrition |
| 3/6-3/10 | - | - | hospital |
| 3/11-3/14 | - | - | post-surgery |
| March 15 | on chair | - | post-surgery |
| March 22 | on chair | 60% | post-surgery |
| March 29 | on ball | 80% | transition |
| April 5 | on ball | 100% | recovery |
| April 12 | on ball | 100% | recovery |
In English: back to work on a borrowed chair the week after surgery, back to training clients two weeks out but truthfully I almost passed out training Kris that week, back to work on my stability ball and much better training clients three weeks out, and back to training myself four weeks out.
Nutrition-wise I wasn't very hungry post-surgery and just eating what was easiest, i.e., bagels with extra cream cheese or scrambled eggs and fruit for breakfast; turkey and ham subway sandwiches, Coke, and chips or leftover Chinese for lunch; and ramen with tofu, egg, and spinach that the sweetie man would make me for dinner, but then I had to change gears when my cholesterol came out a tick higher than it should be for a stroke patient and my primary care physician put me on a statin and a low-fat diet, gromble, two out of three doctors agree that cholesterol was not the cause of my stroke! But, I am a compliant patient. It took a week to switch over, but now I'm on my "recovery" diet, basically the same as my normal diet minus all the eggs and avocados, which was, like, fifty percent of my food, oh well. Oh and, I'm substituting ground turkey for all my ground meats, and it is my jam. Mainly I want to get my LDL well under 100 and get off this statin, my body was doing fiiine on its own on the cholesterol front—my LDL in the hospital was 68— and I hope this hasn't messed up a perfectly good natural mechanism.
Boy, did I pick the right time to retire from derby or what. Obviously retirement supports my recovery, but also nicely vice versa. It's not only freed up time from practices but also from all the friggin desk work, my life has opened up like a flower. It's amazing how little I was breathing and thinking, now that I'm breathing and thinking. I've been thinking a lot about whole day fitness, and writing little workouts and jumping up to try them out, and actually stretching before bed, and Problem started a push-up challenge for her birthday, five pushups a day for fory-five days, I'm finally going to rehabilitate my pushup and get it right!
