Cruise

This week has been very eventful.  My last blog I talked about getting my staples taken out. I decided to take a picture to show everyone how the incision has come along.  It really has healed so nicely.  It is not sensitive to the touch, but internally it is still sore.  I am able to sleep on my side more and more, but I am not able to sleep on my stomach yet.  Getting in and out of bed is a lot easier since the staples have been removed too.  I still have to be careful when moving into different positions, but it is much easier and smoother.

With moving better I can get in and out of bed much easier and walk a little more.  Because of this I no longer need the commode in the bedroom.  I am able to use the walker and go to the bathroom and I have enough energy to get there and back.  This is obviously great for many reasons.  One big thing I am noicing is that the more I move around the pain in my muscles get less and less.  They still hurt sometimes when I move certain ways especially the center of my chest.  When I run my hand down the center of my sternum there is a section of bone that sticks out a little.  If you look at my x-ray you
can see the wire.  That is there to support my bones.  During the transplant they had to move my bones around a lot when placing the lungs in.  My doctor told me that because I am thin I can really feel the wire in there.  I don’t have much fat to cushion it.  Believe it or not the most sensitive thing in your body is your bones (I learned that after my port was put in). Until it calluses up, the wire is going to bother the sternum there.  She said there are some people that always feel it there, but it is no longer painful.  There are causes where it is so bothersome it has to be removed, but that is very rare.

Big news…I was behind the wheel for the first time in over a year.  Courtney wanted to go shopping for furniture for her new apartment and asked me and Jay if we wanted to go with her.  We both wanted to go and then Jason said to me, “You should drive there.”  At first I was a little apprehensive.  I really wanted to drive again and I had been talking about it, but we were driving about forty minutes away.  I wasn’t sure if my legs were strong enough to last that long.  He pushed me to give it a try saying we can always pull over and switch if I needed to.  So I got behind the wheel and pulled out of the driveway.  At first it felt a little foreign to me.  I was nervous and I felt out of practice.  In less than two blocks, however I was comfortable.  I was a little surprised how it came back so quickly.  It felt so liberating to be able to drive myself.  I was so excited because now I can take myself to PT.  Being able to drive on my own is gaining back a huge part of my independence.  Independence is definitely something that is easy to take for granted until it is gone.  Every time I get a little bit of it back I get so excited.

Some more awesome news to report….My spirometry is up to 350 and my incentive spirometry is 1700!  The numbers just keep going up and up.