A Piece of Cake

I'll get to the cake in a moment, but first I'll give you a quick update on my appointment yesterday with my cardiologist.

He was quite surprised to see me in his office yesterday, thinking that my heart surgery was scheduled for the next day (a Tuesday), then quickly recovering and realizing that the surgery is scheduled for March, not February. Heidi and I used this visit to ask as many questions as we could think of about the procedure, preparation for the procedure, recovery from the procedure, and any other questions we had about this heart condition of mine. We went away feeling like we had gotten most of our questions answered and now will await the date of surgery itself.

I had an interesting discovery the other day as I was working on one of my new exercises for therapy. It involves a lunge (or a large step with one foot forward), and then a rotation of the upper body in the direction of the forward foot to the point that I extend both arms behind me to that side and turn my head to look straight back down my extended arm. Basically my torso and upper body are twisted in the opposite direction from my hips and lower body. It's really quite a cool and challenging exercise and one that totally shows the deficiency of the left side of my body. When I plant my right foot forward and turn the upper body to look back to the right, things are pretty good. When I plant my left foot forward and try to position my arms and upper body to look back to the left, . . well let's just say it doesn't work. There must be many, many muscles in the leg that work to balance the body, and they just are not fully functioning at this time on that left side. This helps me understand so much better why my walking takes so much concentration, and why my muscles get so fatigued so quickly. A helpful insight.

Now for the cake. The MRI of my knee was taken care of this evening. It was done here at Memorial Hospital which can be seen from my front doorstep. The test took 20 minutes (I didn't even wait for a minute in the waiting room), and my head didn't even go into the machine. I didn't have to follow any instructions bout holding my breath either, so I took a little nap. I was back home 30 minutes after I left the house. It was a piece of cake!

We should get results in a couple of days.

Thanks again for your prayers!