This is roughly what a typical day, looks like at the moment:
6:30-7:00 Wake up and get up. Time dictated by Sleep Cycle app. Take enormous quantities of drugs, mostly blood pressure meds. Getting up is slow, and I'm usually fairly unsteady first thing.
7:15-8:15 Physio and other exercises. I've started to include things like crunches and planks to further improve core strength. By the end, I am a bit more steady.
8:30-9:15 Shower, shave, dress. I'm back to wet shaving myself, and showering is much less of a chore than it was for a while. My balance while in the shower itself is good, and toweling off is easier. I use the whole shower through dressing experience as an opportunity to keep stretching myself. Mostly involving balancing on one leg for short controlled periods, which is now far from automatic.
9:15-9:30 Another exercise with the balance mat; a block of special foam that I have to stand on, or step onto and off. This thing becomes increasingly irritating, as it's very hard to see any progress. Of course, the reality is that I can do things on it now that I couldn't attempt six weeks ago, but it's still annoying.
9:30-10:00 Breakfast. Pineapple juice and cereal with milk. I get about 2 servings of fruit from the juice and dried fruit in the cereal. I should go back to making oatmeal because the soluble fibre is so good, but I've been a bit lazy.
10:11:30 Email, some writing, getting ready for the gym, a bit of G+, whatever. Touch typing is faster than it was 5 months ago, but definitely slower in the right hand than it was 6 months ago.
11:45-13:00 Gym. Typically 25-40 minutes of cardio, some weights and then finish off with some walking practice on the treadmill. Everything now gets logged in Fitocracy, except the walking, since I tend not to get my heart rate high enough.
13:00-13:30 Swim. I'm up to 600m breast stroke, and I'm working on extending that. I stretch between each set of 4 or 2 25m lengths, counting the stretch in breaths.
14:00-14:30 Lunch. I've usually had some fruit before going to the gym, but I'm often quite hungry by now. Fortunately (?) I can only eat slowly.
14:30-18:30 "Work" which is variously email, writing. dealing with whatever's come up. Most recently converted my sister's old laptop to dual-boot ubuntu as a first step to weaning the family off Windows, which I may have mentioned is inherently bad for my blood pressure.
18:30-19:00 Some more physio on the wretched balance cushion.
19:00-20:00 Watch my excellent cousin Cathy read the news on Channel 4. There are other people, too, but she's the best, obviously. Try not to stab their culture correspondent in the neck.
20:00-21:00 Dinner. Om nom nom. Again, I've often snacked on fruit at about 5 or 6 pm, and drink plenty of water during the day.
21:00-22:00 Read, telly, or whatever; I'm not that taken by most telly, but I do like to read before...
22:00 Bedtime! This drifts out towards 23:00, but rarely much later than that.
I also work face, mouth and hand exercise into there, whenever I remember to have a spare moment. Often while lying in bed.
I'm working on speeding up some of the slownesses, so that it will become feasible to be rising early and going to the gym, having a full day's work, and a bit of evening time, but I reckon my working day is going to be pretty full when I do get back to work. That's OK, some of the crazier expectations of US working practice can be managed away with hard work.
There's gaps because sometimes things just take longer than they used to (or ought to), and that's the way it goes. I keep telling myself it's getting better, and I'm sure it is, but probably too slowly to notice.
6:30-7:00 Wake up and get up. Time dictated by Sleep Cycle app. Take enormous quantities of drugs, mostly blood pressure meds. Getting up is slow, and I'm usually fairly unsteady first thing.
7:15-8:15 Physio and other exercises. I've started to include things like crunches and planks to further improve core strength. By the end, I am a bit more steady.
8:30-9:15 Shower, shave, dress. I'm back to wet shaving myself, and showering is much less of a chore than it was for a while. My balance while in the shower itself is good, and toweling off is easier. I use the whole shower through dressing experience as an opportunity to keep stretching myself. Mostly involving balancing on one leg for short controlled periods, which is now far from automatic.
9:15-9:30 Another exercise with the balance mat; a block of special foam that I have to stand on, or step onto and off. This thing becomes increasingly irritating, as it's very hard to see any progress. Of course, the reality is that I can do things on it now that I couldn't attempt six weeks ago, but it's still annoying.
9:30-10:00 Breakfast. Pineapple juice and cereal with milk. I get about 2 servings of fruit from the juice and dried fruit in the cereal. I should go back to making oatmeal because the soluble fibre is so good, but I've been a bit lazy.
10:11:30 Email, some writing, getting ready for the gym, a bit of G+, whatever. Touch typing is faster than it was 5 months ago, but definitely slower in the right hand than it was 6 months ago.
11:45-13:00 Gym. Typically 25-40 minutes of cardio, some weights and then finish off with some walking practice on the treadmill. Everything now gets logged in Fitocracy, except the walking, since I tend not to get my heart rate high enough.
13:00-13:30 Swim. I'm up to 600m breast stroke, and I'm working on extending that. I stretch between each set of 4 or 2 25m lengths, counting the stretch in breaths.
14:00-14:30 Lunch. I've usually had some fruit before going to the gym, but I'm often quite hungry by now. Fortunately (?) I can only eat slowly.
14:30-18:30 "Work" which is variously email, writing. dealing with whatever's come up. Most recently converted my sister's old laptop to dual-boot ubuntu as a first step to weaning the family off Windows, which I may have mentioned is inherently bad for my blood pressure.
18:30-19:00 Some more physio on the wretched balance cushion.
19:00-20:00 Watch my excellent cousin Cathy read the news on Channel 4. There are other people, too, but she's the best, obviously. Try not to stab their culture correspondent in the neck.
20:00-21:00 Dinner. Om nom nom. Again, I've often snacked on fruit at about 5 or 6 pm, and drink plenty of water during the day.
21:00-22:00 Read, telly, or whatever; I'm not that taken by most telly, but I do like to read before...
22:00 Bedtime! This drifts out towards 23:00, but rarely much later than that.
I also work face, mouth and hand exercise into there, whenever I remember to have a spare moment. Often while lying in bed.
I'm working on speeding up some of the slownesses, so that it will become feasible to be rising early and going to the gym, having a full day's work, and a bit of evening time, but I reckon my working day is going to be pretty full when I do get back to work. That's OK, some of the crazier expectations of US working practice can be managed away with hard work.
There's gaps because sometimes things just take longer than they used to (or ought to), and that's the way it goes. I keep telling myself it's getting better, and I'm sure it is, but probably too slowly to notice.
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