The slow recovery

   My dad is still in the rehab center, but we are hoping that he will be transitioned to assisted living with my mother sometime in the next week.

   A few days ago, I visited my doctor.  He said that I'm still a bit sick and that my lungs are still congested.  My resting heart rate is higher than usual, about 70 beats per minute.  Usually, it is in the upper 50s.  


That's a chart of my resting heart rate over the last year according to my iPhone.  You can see it go up in November when I got the coronavirus.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A temporary Stalemate - long

   My dad has been fighting a long, arduous battle against covid since November 2.  For a month, he experienced the fevers, weakness, and the shortness of breath that is common for covid patients.  Why has he survived?  I think he has had three great loves that have allowed him to persevere:  love of family, love of nature, and love of sport.    My father has always had strong emotions.  Over the years, he has done much for my mother, my brother, his aunt, and my children.  My mother has had chronic fatigue syndrome, so my father did the shopping and ran the house financially.  He always helped his now 97 year-old aunt in Brooklyn with any financial matters together with multiple phone calls.  He sent my brother and I though college and calls us a few times per week even though he is not talkative (my mother does most of the talking.)  He always drove the 4 to 6 hour trips to the hospital when my son was having lung issues (more than a dozen times).  Many times he drove to my house to
Read more

Good news, weight loss sliver lining (long 800 words)

Dad is doing alright.  His biggest problem is that he needs 10 liters per minute of oxygen to stay alive.   He is doing very well with occupational and physical therapy.   His lungs need to heal.   He has other neurological problems that largely predated covid.   His eye hand coordination, balance, and ability to read have been problematic over the last year.   As a result he has had difficulty operating a cell phone.   But otherwise, he is improving. The last two days have been a great improvement for me.  I was discharged from the hospital two days ago!!  At the hospital, my lungs had healed enough that I was on room air (no supplemental oxygen) for 23 hours a day.  I am staying at my parent’s house and my daughter has driven down from Brown University to take care of me.   My high high school friend Scott helped me out a lot in the hospital.  Normally, I take a vitamin D supplement prescribed by my doctor.  The hospital for some unknown reason would never give me vitamin D.  Scot
Read more

Vaccines

   My father and mother both got vaccinated on Friday.  My father threw up the next day and he lost oxygen saturation, so they put him on two liters per minute without any fever. He quickly improved over the next 24 hours.  We are hoping to transition my father to lower intensity assisted living with my mother in two weeks.    After getting vaccinated, my mother's only symptom was feeling lethargic for a couple of days.          My health is continuing to improve.  I jogged a mile twice last week and walked another 9 miles total.  My resting heart rate continues to drop.  It peaked around December 20th at 73 beats per minute (bpm).  I'm down to about 61 bpm.  Before covid, my resting heart rate was 56.  I lost 25 pounds during covid and I have regained 20 of those 25 pounds.  I think my stress level is lower for two reasons:  my mother has been staying with me which is nice because we talk more easily in person than on the phone, and I have not been working very much due to cov
Read more