Day 53: Increasing My Steps

I slept poorly overnight only getting 2.5 hours of deep sleep according to my UP24 band. I only woke up twice but the rest of the night was not restful. It was the first night not waking up to take the narcotics.  

Not taking the narcotics may have had something to do with the poor sleep even though I did not wake up in pain. 

I started my morning taking a walk with Laura and Sasha followed by making a protein shake for breakfast. It has felt good getting back to having a shake in the morning.

I wrote out five more thank you cards for a total of 15 cards in the past three days. I am trying to tackle five per day so that it is not such a daunting task.

I started to draft the Facebook article since several people on Facebook last night said it would be helpful to them. I am pushing out other articles that I had been working on to next week. I will plan on publishing the Facebook article on Friday.

Laura worked from home for the majority of the day, not leaving until mid-afternoon. She was originally planning on heading in to her office for the full day but once she started working she was able to stay productive so decided to stay home.

I went through the bags of gifts that people have sent over the last two months and organized everything. We have torn through our apartment in the last week cleaning the piles of stuff that had accumulated since going into the hospital.

Before she took off for her office, I went for another walk with Laura and Sasha. Taking Sasha for walks has been another return to normalcy for me since I was the one to always take her before.

I continued working on the new Built Unstoppable feature that will be launching in about a week. I still have a lot of work to get it ready for launch.

I continued reading Spartan Up! which I am almost done with. I am considering introducing book reviews to Built Unstoppable. The book reviews would be focused solely on those that help others be built unstoppable. This book would definitely fit that bill.

I ended up falling asleep for about 30 minutes before being startled awake by a knock at our door. A colleague of Laura's friend dropped off dinner for us which was really nice. While not as healthy as I would like, the gesture is sweet and very much appreciated.

Prior to leaving for physical therapy I took two Advil in anticipation of being tortured. My ortho surgeon encouraged me to use Advil liberally as we enter the next phase of recovery especially as I work myself off of the narcotics.

I set a goal of coming off of the pain medication by end of day this Friday. We will see if I am able to hold to that but I think it is achievable. If something happens then I will still have those narcotics in the medicines cabinet.

I walked to and from physical therapy today. It has been nice to get longer walks in and it also gives me a chance to listen to podcasts.

After using ultrasound technology and dynamic stretching we began active PT. While still tight and fairly sore, my physical therapist was surprised with how well I did for our first active session. 

He gave me a shoulder pulley system to use at home in between appointments including other exercises that he wants me to start doing. Though I know that this next phase will be painful I am looking forward to it.

Not long after I got back home from PT Laura came home and we took Sasha for another walk. I should end today with the most steps I have taken since getting injured!

Laura is cooking the dinner that was dropped off for us while I watch the San Francisco Giants game. 

I am trying to relax tonight since my neck and head hurt from not sleeping well last night.