Great post, Don. Verbose, witty, and factual information for all. Best wishes for a continued
"rehab".

Bob Swinney
"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...

After my quintuple bypass I got enlisted to 24 sessions of "cardiac
rehab", paid for by medicare I guess. Thanks to y'all contributors.

I've showed up for most of the sessions. The pitchfork in me arse
from me lovin' mate may have helped. That'd be a five-tine fork.
Potato digger. Her favorite. I'll do all 24 before I'm done.

I've made some friends there, albeit temp, shallow and short-term.
Fellow travelers so to speak. Joe "graduated" today. We've been
kidding and goading each other from about the git-go when we were both
creepers and pillow-huggers. Folks who have had their sternum sawn
apart and spread wide do tend to be pillow huggers for a while. I
learned today that issues with my shoulders (mid deltoids) are common
when they tear ya up like that. Oh well!

Being a vet, I don't take anything seriously so I try to use humor and
perspective to help guys like Joe deal with stress. Joe is a vet too
but his experience was a bit different than mine. Stress can be bad
cardiac juju but it can also be good if managed. Ah mean, rehab is
reintroduction to stress, right? They use machines to get us to
achieve and sustain an elevated but safe heartrate. That's physical
and it's important, but relevant stress ain't all physical. Sometimes
it isn't even primarily physical. It is, however, very individual.
Condx that would create nearly intolerable stress to one individual
may be a yawn for another. The trick is to learn when to yawn.

The perspective that I try to bring to the party is that nobody ever
got a bodybag by missing someone else's expectation of schedule or
whatever.

I shook hands with Joe and bade him good luck today. We skipped the
hugs, this not being California or anything. We've kidded each other
along thru rehab. He seemed to appreciate it. We've talked about
stress, I hope I gave him some perspective. He seems like one hell of
a decent guy. Mar thinks so too. Mar's eclectic sense of character
has been infallible so far but it's only been 25 years...

Evil Mark (staffer) keeps raising the bar for me with sadistic glee.
Today he set the bar at 3.2 mph on the treadmill, 2% grade, 20
minutes. That must sound like feathers to y'all young chargers, but
it ain't bad for the likes of me and we. Then the hard part: the
freakin' Airdyne. God how I hate that SOB but I'm gaining on it. The
first 19 mintues (of 20 ) are always the hardest.

I think it's best to have as much fun as possible before ya die, and
then to die as quickly and neatly as possible. Take as many dragons
as possible with if there be deserving dragons at a propitious time.








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