And so begins week 3...

Today I began week three of pulmonary rehab.  I'm feeling confident with the routine and the equipment now.  The therapists are great and my fellow rehaber's made me feel welcome right away.  Here's a shout out to Vern, Hal, Omar, Henry, Charlie, Leon, Mary Jane and Barbara.  I am the youngest of the group but I find myself trying to keep up with a couple of them even though they have 20-30 years on me.  We work out to a mix of oldies tunes including such favorites as Roll Out the Barrel, The Bunny Hop, My Little Redheaded Airhead, and a smattering of rousing polkas.  Some of the songs just make me crack up.

After taking an initial blood pressure reading, I'm off to the treadmill which I have lovingly dubbed 'the dreadmill' because it takes so long and goes nowhere.  Today my time was upped to 22 minutes.  Definitely my least favorite.  In between each exercise you go to a central chair location to check your O2 sats and heart rate.  Next I'm off to the wall pulleys.  Here I do two minutes of arm lifts then I turn around and do two more minutes of arm punches, kinda like a boxer.  O2 check.

Then I get on the Biodex which is kind of like a bicycle but easier on the knees and it has your arms moving as well.  I start out like gang busters cuz it's fun but near the end of my ten minutes, I am much slower and the fun is surely gone.  O2 check again.  Then I head over to the Arm Ergo which is a fancy way to say your arms are pedaling. I'm still at the lowest tension on that one and I can only imagine the torture training I'm in for when they decide my arms are ready to handle more work.  After 10 minutes of this, my arms are feeling like noodles.  Floppy noodles.  O2 check once again.

Now I head over to the Cybex machines.  I work out different arm and leg muscles in repetitions of ten on each of the 5 machines.  These are my favorites.  I think I even saw what might pass for a muscle while I worked on them today.  O2 check time.  Now for my last and quickest stop:  the dumbbells.  Using the 4 lb weights, I do some bicep curls and arm lifts.  Yawns generally start breaking out at this point.  I am getting tired.  One last O2 monitor and a final blood pressure check and I am DONE.  Call it a work out!

One of my challenges is keeping my blood sugar in check.  I tend to lose it about Cybex time no matter what I eat.  Today I paused my insulin pump and that seemed to help so I think I'm on to something there.  I also  had a good lung bleed (hemoptysis) on Friday while out running an errand and was a bit concerned I might stir things up again while exercising today but everything went fine.

So now you know what keeps me out of mischief for three afternoons a week.  They tried to make me go to rehab and I said, "yes, yes, Yes."