Today has been a decent day for pain management thus far with the exception of when I first woke up. 

Every night I have only kept the blanket up to my waist where I have a pillow for my arms to rest on. However, I woke up freezing cold in the middle of the night so I asked Laura to put the covers over my arms. Bad decision. The weight of the blankets caused a lot of pain. Thankfully it was quickly resolved with my morning medications.

Knowing that I would lose most of my muscle mass, I decided to weigh myself this morning. In three weeks I am down 20 lbs and that isn’t including the 1-2 lbs that my slings weight. Of course, weight doesn’t account for everything but it is the most I can do since I can’t extend my arms to use my body fat % device. I’m hoping that my body fat % at least is the same. Still, no matter what, losing that much weight in three weeks is kind of crazy.

I have tried to keep my diet mostly healthy but have increased my complex carb intake and allowed myself to have more snacks. I know that I’ll be able to whip myself back into shape as I go through recovery.

I have already gone for two walks so far today and completed one set of pendulum swings. I haven’t done stairs the past few days because it has been far too hot around here. Later I will complete another round of pendulum swings and take a shower - both of which are far harder than they would seem.

I have spent the majority of the day working on the new website that I have been talking about for the past several days. Today I am happy to unveil Built Unstoppable to you. Thanks to the help of Jason SurfrApp and Caroline Kelso Winegeart, all of my daily Facebook updates have been added.

I came to realize that these daily updates were actually journal entries that were being shared publicly. Thanks to AJ Leon for helping me to realize that. 

It was from this that I decided that it would be more helpful to share this journey with an even broader audience outside of just the Facebook ecosystem. Beyond these journal entries I also want to share articles based on my learnings going through this recovery. I hope to publish 1-2 articles per week, as I can, along with the daily journal entries.

My goal with Built Unstoppable is to inspire those who come along with us on this journey and to be helpful to those who are going through difficult times of their own - whether that be a medical condition or making a major change in their lives. 

You can subscribe via email at the bottom of this journal entry or RSS to receive the daily journal entries and articles. I will also continue to post the journal entries on Facebook but the articles will only be available on Built Unstoppable.

You’ll notice the website is clean and that was done purposefully. There might be slight changes in the future but I want to keep it clean.

I have decided to host the website on Squarespace. Why? First, I have never seriously used Squarespace. And with the time I have while I’m recovering, I thought it would be interesting to test with. Secondly, I can lose hours tweaking the Wordpress backend instead of writing. This will change that once I get past the initial learning curve. Third, I’m working on a new me in many ways so I thought it would be fun to use a new platform at the same time.

I hope to continue to inspire you and many others as we continue on this journey. Thank you for the inspiration and support - it means a lot to us.