It has been one week since I have been out of the hospital. Here is how I feel: I feel like I did an inappropriate amount of exercise yesterday;I took my first bike ride of the season and rode 20 km; I went out and paddled 6 km. Today I am fatigued and at times a bit sore in my chest, but it is not worse than that.

Last night I went to bed at about 11:00 p.m. I took some Tylenol with some added antihistamine / decongestant (I get those things mixed up) before I went to lay down. The painkiller part is just to put a bit of a lid on the chest discomfort that seems to get a bit worse at the end of the day due to all the movements during the day. The pain is modest, even without the Tylenol, but I kept being told at the Heart Institute not to let the pain get away on me. I would be a little more worried if I were on a narcotic pain killer, but I have been assured that there are minimal addictive properties to plain old Tylenol. I have had a bit of a nasal drip that translates into a cough, so my family doctor thought that using this mix would make for better sleep at nights. It worked.

My morning routine so far has been that of a lazy king. I get up and sit down. My wife will then bring to me (or I will go the table) a coffee and a banana and some toast or English Muffins, or cereal, and one morning a one egg omlette with more veggies than egg. Breakfast tuckers me out, so I go and sit and rest or lay down and rest. The three areas of planned daily activity for me are the morning stretches and breathing exercises, as well as two brief walks. The starting benchmark for me was six minutes on Tuesday per walk and I get to increase that by a minute a day. By this time next year I will be walking over 12 hours a day!!!!

I am restricted to not lifting anything over 10 pounds or 4.5 kilos. That is not that heavy and does not allow me to haul one of our cats around. He is used to being carried as soon as I come in the door and is not pleased about this hiatus. Our beagle is not one of those dogs that is the proper sort of “at the side of the master” they show on OLN and his pulling (or at least potential of pulling) would cause havoc on the sternum.

I am thinking of making a line of t-shirts for those just out of cardiac surgery; Be Serious – Please Do Not Make Me Laugh . It hurts to laugh, it hurts to cough, and it especially hurts to sneeze. If you have the time, and you have not left it too far away, you can grab your official University of Ottawa Teddy - more rectangular piece of foam than theodorus ursus and hug it. It sort of dissipates the pain. Two or three good coughs in a row certainly get your attention.

But I have no pain complaints. The actual chest incision and left arm incision look funky in a Mel Brooks / Tim Burton sort of way and once in a while remind you they are there but that is it. The sternum pain is more than manageable with the acetaminophen. The most bother seems to be the little cramps and aches that seem to result from sleeping a lot on your back

The biggest short horizon fear I have is doing something to that healing sternum by either falling, or doing something dumb like a mega sneeze, or trying to grab a door in the wind, or picking something up that is heavier than you thought. I am not sure if it is that easy to open up the bone, but they kept telling you to be careful at the Heart Institute.

I am surprised at the low level of discomfort. What does surprise me is my low level of energy that I possess. It should not really be a surprise, I had lots of warning but it is still amazing. The nurses and therapists warn your about it but it's a bit surprising. My wife and I went to Neat Coffee in Burnstown this afternoon. They were having a busy day and the parking lot was Ottawa Valley nueva primavera. So it was a bit of a struggle to get to the café, and then a bit of standing in line, and then a bit a wait for our order. It also happened that there were at least three people that we knew there so that resulted in a bit of chit chat. It was a very pleasant visit but when I got home I had to lay down for about half an hour.

My brain power is not at full capacity. If my brain were not at such a low ebb I would not , for example, open a paragraph with such a lob ball. This would be an ideal time to, for example, read stuff by Tim Hudak yet I am , for some reason , not on his mailing list. I am on the mailing list of the Woman Who Claims to Be Our Member of Parliament and I was pleased to catch up on a plot by a rich Toronto Lawyer to target her for her liberal ideas on gun ownership. But my plan to read and read and read is proving at this point not to be ultra attractive. I am reading a book at the moment by Lisa Moore called February that is about a fictional personal family aftermath to the sinking of the Ocean Ranger. There is nothing wrong with the book, yet reading at this instant seems to be tiring. I now channel surf (!!!) for an hour or two a day and have become fond of Food Network.

This languid / indolent / lazy brain and bit of fatigue has slowed down the blogging. I blog for no one but myself and friends but I still have to get my hospital notes in for my record.

All in all – my first week at home has been fantastic and has taught me a lot. I am one lucky guy. .