With Laura and her mom cleaning until late last night, Laura and I didn’t fall asleep until after taking my 12:15a pain meds. That is the latest that either of us have stayed up in months, even before this entire journey started. It caused the rest of the night to feel “off” since my body has become programmed to the times that I have to wake up for pain meds throughout the night.

I had trouble with the knife-edge of my left hand overnight and into this morning. I have dealt with the loss of feeling in my left hand but not in the way I felt it last night or throughout the morning. I’m not sure what caused it but I’m hoping it doesn’t return tonight.

This morning I decided to cycle myself off of my longer-term pain medication - the one that I take once every 12 hours in between taking the short-term pain medication every four hours. I figured that if cycling off of it didn’t work, I could always take it a couple of hours in to get it back into my system. 

I didn’t have any adverse affects from coming off of it so that should mean another medication down. The past couple of days I am becoming increasingly more aggressive with coming off of my different medications.

Thank you to Mark W. Schaefer and Tom Webster for basing this week’s Marketing Companion episode on this journey. It made me tear up knowing that both of them (as well as many of you!) were checking their phones throughout the night to see if I posted a post-surgery update.

Following listening to the Marketing Companion podcast, I turned to another Tim Ferriss episode, this one with Joe De Sena, the co-founder of Spartan Race and author of Spartan Up! 

While I have always been interested in health and fitness, my focus is becoming honed to performance training, stability, fitness hacking, yoga and other related areas. As I’ve mentioned before, I won’t be able to lift heavy weights again (at least not a couple of years) so turning to these alternatives have been helpful.

I chatted with Nicole D’Alonzo on yoga and meditation. We worked through a few basic yoga moves that I could start with next week, increasing difficulty and adding styles as I get further through my recovery. Following our chat I took a Doshas Assessment to help identify my current mind and body state.

To make it more convenient we scheduled physical therapy earlier in the day than we have during the previous weeks. During physical therapy we used ultrasound technology, did dynamic stretching and then I hopped into the pool for aquatic therapy. 

I continued to tear through The Four Hour Body this afternoon while starting to map what next steps are for me with supplements and diet. As it is starting to pan out there will likely not be many changes compared to where I was pre-injuries but there will be a few.

My physical therapist was happy with my progress since last seeing him on Friday. Of course, since Friday is when I have been pushing myself harder so hopefully that has helped with flexibility and range of motion.

Following physical therapy I fell asleep for a bit while waiting for Laura to get home from her office. While I usually would fight off naps, I have let my body dictate when I need to sleep since it is so critical for healing.

Tonight we took Laura’s mom out to one of the restaurants that are part of Laura’s restaurant group. It was my second time out to dinner since Saturday. It felt good getting out of the house again. It also gave us a chance to thank the executive chef who made some of the meals that were sent home with Laura over the last couple of weeks.

Getting dressed was much easier since I had showered and shaven yesterday instead of trying to do it all today like we had on Saturday. That was a bonus that I hadn’t thought of until we started getting me dressed.

Now that we’re back home, I’m giving Laura and her mom some time to hang out together since Laura’s mom leaves after seven weeks tomorrow morning. We certainly could not have made it through the last seven weeks without her support. At dinner we all agreed that this experience has caused us all to grow.