Keeping Busy

Can you believe Halloween is now over?  Thanksgiving and Christmas are  just around the corner!  We had a fun time last night – we took the girls to my mom’s house in LaPalma and trick-o-treated around the neighborhood with my family and our really good friend’s and their kids – I even walked the majority of the route.  Jillian and I didn’t finish the last leg of the route since we were both tired from walking so much (toward the end, Jillian rode in the wagon my brother-in-law was pulling) and she was getting hot (Jillian dressed up as a pegasus/pony and Kandice was batgirl).  It was so nice to see them sooo excited going together to each house!

This week is back to my “work” – doing things around the house and doing my exercises (starting this week, I’m not going to go to physical therapy since I’ve been going for over a year now and taking a “break” until the beginning of the year to get other “stuff” done).  I’m going to see my plastic surgeon for finishing my reconstruction on Wednesday and actually doing the procedure next Wednesday.  I am going to follow-up with my oncologist to see if I need to stay on my cancer meds.  I’m back at my pre-steroid weight but my body is not the same – I have a “gut”, which I never had before, and a lot less muscle tone so I have to do cardio to get rid of the gut and strengthen more to get my back  stronger.  The problem is, if I do any functional standing (doing an activity while standing), my back pain increases.  But, the good thing is, the more I lie down on my foam roll and stretch out my back, the longer I can tolerate functional standing.  It is definitely an alignment and strength issue.  If I stand, gravity just likes to push me down and puts my spine in a kyphotic position (hump in my back) that creates a lot of pain in my lumbar spine (if it curves a lot in my upper back, my lower back also curves more creating pain) and my muscles in my spine are too weak to push against gravity right now.  So, stretching on the foam roll, helps put my spine in a better alignment with less “hump” and if I do strengthening excercises for my back while lying on the foam roll, my back can hold up against gravity when I stand for a short while and hopefully once my back gets stronger, I can stand against gravity for longer!  That is the goal!  I was also going to walk in our jacuzzi but the problem with that is when I get out, I have more pain and am  really tired!!  After being so buoyant in the water, coming out adds more pressure and I’m already tired from doing some activity in the water; once I get out, it feels like I’m carrying a ton of bricks!  But the good thing is I’m on the road to recovery but now the uphill battle is plateauing off and is taking longer and longer to improve just the slighest little bit!  My dizziness has not seemed to improve but I hope one day, it will start to.  I’m surprised that we are almost at the end of 2010 and 2011 is not too far away!  It’s just going to get busier and busier!!