The 800 Mark

This past week I was at gym.  The beginning of the week was my typical workout, which I burn 500 calories and then I'm wiped!  It has been this way since the brain bleed.  However, this past week on the 26th month anniversary since being in ICU I achieved my goal of completing six miles, burning 808 calories, keeping my heart rate between 128-130bpm, and doing this in 64 minutes.  This was a huge achievement for me!!!  Yes it had been since August 30, 2011, since I last did this, but I finally nailed it this week!!!!

I did not preplan this, but merely when I was working out everything was great and when I hit the 500 calorie mark I thought today is the day to try this or at least get to 700 calories.  Once I reached 700, I thought lets go to 800, which I was able to do eight minutes later.  Since that day, I have done it two other times; however, Saturday was a 600 calorie burn and Sunday was the day to rest my body.

Since the brain bleed I was very blessed with the ability to come out of it walking, talking, swallowing, and all other things that could have went wrong. However, it also caused some set backs and one major one was it took a lot of my physical strength from me, which has been really hard for someone who actually would daily go to the gym and easily burn at least 900 calories without a blink of an eye.  I can't tell you how wonderful it felt to burn 800 calories without a lot of difficulty.  It felt like a big part of my life started flowing back into me and I was gaining that physical strength back that was suddenly taken from me.  Yep it took 26 months but it happened!  I have not felt this excited about something since we bought our home!!!  It was so much fun to share with  Kirk and several of my friends who have been with me since the beginning and also my new friends, who have heard about what happened to me.

 Ironically the night before this happened we were at Kirk's coworker's house down here in Puyallup and her home has several stairs.  She invited me to go down stairs and as we were going down she had observed me walking slowly down stairs and gripping the hand rail tightly so I would not get dizzy and lose balance.  Kirk then shared with her that since the bleed stairs are very challenging for me, and in fact this was why we chose to buy a rambler.   She then looked at me and empathically told me she was sorry and that the brain bleed happened and could not believe everything that I now coped with in life.

After the 800 calorie burn, I thought back to that previous night, and thought that yes going down stairs is a dangerous activity for me to do, and some other things happened that I may or may not ever fully recover from, I do know that I'm not allowing the brain bleed to dictate my life rather I have and still am regaining control over my own life. This does not mean that I'm going to make stupid choices such as running down a flight of stairs, sky diving, riding rollercoasters, over working my body and not listening to it.  Like most everyone there are some activities that are just done for me and I'm ok with that.  However, I will listen to my body and when it feels strong and ready I'm going for the 800 on the elliptical. Who knows maybe 26 months later I will run 5 miles in 30 minutes on the treadmill again, but not now my balance is not their and I do not want to fall flat on my face. Right now I'm happy with this moment in my life.