Cardiac Rehab makes you think about how bad you've got it -- obviously, you wouldn't be there unless something pretty crappy had happened to you, lol - but also how good you've got it. #1, you're lucky to have lived through the crappy thing and be able to attend rehab....#2, there are people in there recovering from even crappier things than you experienced.
I was on the treadmill this afternoon when an older man on the sitting elliptical machine facing me signaled for a nurse. I heard him telling her that he was having pain around his incision.....he's diabetic, so it's been taking a very long time to heal. The nurse asked him if she could take a look....he said Sure...and she raised his shirt to check his incision. I nearly tripped and fell off my treadmill. It was horrible....the scar was red and purple and as big around as my little finger, there was mild bruising on his chest, the whole area just LOOKED painful. For the first time, it really occurred to me that some of the people next to me on the ellipticals doing only 5 minutes at Level 1 while I am doing 20 minutes on Level 6 are open heart surgery patients, and what is just moderately tiring for me must be absolutely excruciating for someone who had their sternum cracked open and wired back together. I had the deadliest type of heart attack you can have and an organ full of mesh metal stents, but at least my chest is still in one piece....which makes me feel pretty damn lucky in a rather messed up, morbid kind of way, lol.
It's not easy getting used to this new life I have to live now, and there are a lot of moments that I feel depressed and overwhelmed....but I'm also learning to be thankful for the little things. From a song that plays in my head frequently these days, the words of the late/great Jerry Garcia...
Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me
Other times, I can barely see
Lately, it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it's been.....
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Tracy Rhodes
Charleston SC
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