Day 49: Now with Even Less Medication

Last night I used the Sleep Cycle app to start tracking my sleep (again). Once I can start using my UP24 again then I will have two different apps tracking sleep. 

Prior to my injuries I used UP24 religiously on a nightly basis but I will enjoy having another data source with richer data. I’ll compare both and see if one wins out over the other since the UP24 has the ability to wake you up within a set period of time as well.

Though I woke up around 6:45a which was earlier than planned, it was still more sleep than I have gotten since the seizures happened. 

Today was the last day of two other medications (yay!) according to the calendar that we were provided from the hospital. That leaves me with only two medications left from the small pharmacy I was on - pain and anti-seizure medications. 

I am willing to take handfuls of vitamins and multiple shakes on a daily basis but am not a fan of taking prescriptions. I have never taken as many at once as I have had to over the last several weeks. Being able to cycle off of them has made me really happy.

I took a shower, shaved and brushed my teeth in anticipation of going out to dinner tonight with Laura. As with most things in life, it gets easier every time. Shaving was still a bit hard for me to do but I was happy that I shaved by myself twice this week.

While I was still out of my slings I completed two sets of 15 reps on squats with my hands on the counter. By the second set around the fifth rep they got harder but I wanted to push myself to set a new goal. 

A couple of days ago when I did these squats for the first time I could only get a single set of 15 reps.

Laura took off this morning to get her hair done which gave me time to set up my new Samsung Galaxy Tab S.

Though you can just input your Google account info, I enjoy setting up everything again. It’s a fresh canvas to rethink. After taking time to set it all up I packaged up my previous tablet to ship to Gazelle.

I spent time breaking out the About page on Built Unstoppable and added a simple Contact page. These are small updates but I continue to try making them slowly instead of spending hours building the website all at once with every feature. 

I have stayed focused on writing instead of on design or functionality. I am, however, looking forward to launching a new feature in 11 days that hopefully many of you will like.

I continued reading Spartan Up! today. It is a great book thus far and one that I see a lot of similarities about myself in, both prior to my injuries and now as I go through recovery.

Since I am a goal-oriented person, I decided that I wanted to set my sights on completing a Spartan Race next year. Ideally it would be near August 10th so that it would be a celebratory race for me.

I have never completed a Spartan Race before but it was always something that interested me. After talking with a couple of friends, reading the book and thinking through what would be a great goal to set in front of me, I decided that a Spartan Race would be awesome.

Though I have been told that I will never be able to lift heavy weights, what I don’t know is how much bodyweight stress I can put on my shoulders. Setting the Spartan Race goal a year out will give me the chance to work through that. If I can compete earlier than that then I will.

I finally got sick of seeing my desk overflowing with seven weeks of paperwork, mail, bills, cords and other junk that had piled up. I took time to go through everything and start organizing it. I created a spreadsheet to track all of the incoming medical bills including prescriptions and medical supply purchases. 

We still have to write dozens of thank you cards and go through all of the gifts - hence why none of you have received a card from us yet. They are coming. I promise.

On Laura’s way back home she picked me up Smashburger since someone nicely sent us a gift card. If you have never had Smashburger before, go try it and make sure you order sweet potato fries too. The only fast casual burger that I have had that is equal to it is Five Guys. I am not a fan of In-N-Out. In-N-Out faithfuls will have their pitchforks ready.

Laura came home for a bit to help me with lunch before heading back out to run typical Saturday errands. I had Initially planned on going but since we have a date night planned and we are attending a work party for Laura tomorrow we thought it would be best to not push myself too much.

I wanted to test the speaker on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S so I listened to newest episode of The Productivityist Podcast by my friend Mike Vardy. If you want to increase your productivity then I highly recommend listening to his podcast and subscribing to his blog.

Laura and I headed out for our second date night tonight. It was a lot of fun getting to spend time with her. I enjoyed feeling normal at dinner since I was able to feed myself - something I was not able to do last Saturday when we went out.

During dinner Laura told me a number of things about both before and after going in for my brain surgery that I do not remember. That was similar to both of my shoulder surgeries. It has been interesting hearing those stories.

As I get ready to drift off to dreamland soon I am reminded that tomorrow will mark seven weeks since I had the initial seizure that started this journey.

Thank you to everyone for sticking with us through this. Every like, favorite, comment, message, email and text helps to keep pushing both of us forward.