30 May 2006
Tuesday, 11:45 PM
High-Level Journal Summary: Finally getting to the point where I can exercise my upper body in the same way that I exercise my legs and abdomen. Since brain surgery, I have not rebuilt my upper body strength for good reasons. First, this was restricted for the first 6 months after surgery. Following that, I did not feel ready personally. But today, I began again. I can really tell that I have not done pushups or pullups in a year, though. After today's abnormal and pathetic performance, I clearly have some work to do.
Countdowns:
1.) Day 16 of 28 in my 8th 5/23 Temodar chemotherapy cycle. I am now on the physical upswing of this chemo cycle.
2.) Two notable medical meetings coming next week:
- Bi-monthly MRI at NIH is on 6/7/06. This will determine if my brain tumor is larger, smaller, or the same size.
- My Perfusion MRI with Spectroscopy will be redone at NYU on 6/9/06.
Seizure Activity:
1.) Last Grand Mal Seizure was on 6/30/05.
2.) Last Simple Partial Seizure, or SPS, was 12 days ago. A good pattern is emerging.
3.) I have now had 23 SPS's in the past 159 days (since 12/22/05). This is an average of 1 every 6.9 days.
Actual Journal: For the first six months after my 5/5/05 brain surgery, I only slept with my right cheek on my pillows. (That is plural, by the way. I slept on a single pillow prior to brain surgery.) I needed elevation after brain surgery, and I had to sleep on my right cheek in order to minimize pressure on my left frontal and left temporal lobes.
That took me to about the end of 2005, sleeping in the same position. For some reason, I never forgot this position while asleep. I never "accidentally" rolled over and woke to find myself sleeping on my left cheek, horrified to think what this may have done. For some reason, there was a subconscious awareness that prevented this from ever happening. Not a single time did I roll over onto my left cheek while asleep.
In early 2006, I began to swap positions in bed, though. I would roll from my right cheek on my pillows to my left, flip-flopping throughout the night. No problem.
I still think about all this when I go to bed. Perhaps this is because I can still feel some effects from surgery. For example, when I try to open my mouth as wide as possible -- say for a huge bite of Smily's Pizza in Brooklyn, NY -- I can't open my mouth all the way. The physical tension I feel is where my upper and lower jaw bones meet. The muscles holding all this together feel tense, as if a masseuse needs to work on them for several weeks to ease that tension.
Bottom line, I feel this lingering awareness of changes to my body after surgery. I certainly do not want to sound paranoid. Rather, this is just an awareness that I still maintain. As a result, I decided to keep my exercise fairly localized over the past year.
Legs
I pushed hard to get my legs under me again. Within a few months after surgery, I was well enough to start walking around the block. I would walk in circles so that I was always close to my house. If I started to not feel well, I knew that I was close to home and could circle back quickly. But as soon as I could take extended walks, I took them. Now, it is no problem to walk for 1, 2, 3 hours. I can take on steep hills without much increase in my heart rate. Aerobically, I am extremely fit.
Abdomen
I have been a situps fiend since 5th grade. I missed getting the Presidential Physical Fitness Award one year because of situps. Ever since then (until my 5/5/05 brain surgery), I would do about 100 situps on very regular occasion. As well, I am a french horn player, so that also helps to keep my abdominal muscles fit. (Seriously!) When I walk by mirrors at home, I still check to make sure that I can see the cut of all my abdominal muscles. I am so vain that way, not willing to give them up under any circumstances that I can control. Those muscles remain toned because of good posture and french horn playing. Doing situps again will only help.
Chest and arms
This is where I have noticed atrophy during the past year. It has now been an ENTIRE YEAR since I have done any upper body strength-building. And entire year! I had evolved muscle mass in my chest and arms prior to surgery. However, doing nothing for an entire year takes a toll. By my own admission, my arms are too skinny right now and my chest is not what it used to be a year ago.
Pushups, pullups, situps
A year had passed since surgery. My craniotomy is a thing of the past. I only feel slight consciousness about the physical impact of brain surgery. I have checked with my doctors and they have not restricted me from doing things that place physical pressure on my brain.
With all these green lights, I decided that I have waited long enough. After my walk today, I went back to my usual muscle-building routine -- pushups, pullups, situps. I do this in my laundry room, where I have everything I need. When I did my situps, I could do 3 sets of 30 situps each without ANY issue at all. It hardly felt like I took a year off from doing this exercise. Honestly, it was easy. I could have done double or triple that amount.
However, this was not the same when it came to pushups and pullups. Egad! I normally would crank out 25 high-quality pushups and 5 high-quality pullups, doing this a total of 3 times each. So, a total of 75 pushups and 15 pullups. That would not wind me at all. It would just be simple "maintenance." Doing that on a regular basis was all I needed. (After all, a gold-medalist Olympian in gymnastics did pullups until he died at the age of 100. It can be done!)
But today? 3 sets of 10 good pushups each and 3 sets of 3 good pullups each. A total of 30 pushups and 9 pullups. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. I intentionally kept my repetitions low, though. I wanted to get into things gently and not hurt any muscles that have been ignored for a while. It will take weeks (months?) to return to my original form. The only good news in all this is that seeing my upper-body performance today is great motivation.
Other reasons to rebuild muscle mass
I always talk about best practices as I take on brain cancer. Essentially, I am trying to control what I can control. Why? Because I never know that is going to happen when. The fact remains that not even the best doctors in the world can predict how a brain tumor is going to behave in a particular patient. So, I have taken the approach that I plan for the worst and hope for the best.
In planning for the worst, I need to have the kind of muscle mass that I had going into surgery, and I need to carry that around with me all the time. Yes, I had physical restrictions on me for some time -- restrictions that prevented me from maintaining upper body strength. But that time has come and gone.
Now, I have no excuse for not rebuilding this strength. The good thing is that I am not just talking about this, I am executing on this. I did my first day of strength-building since 5/3/05. 1 year and 27 days ago. Yikes. We'll see how long it takes to build back to the form I will accept. I am hoping that my relative youth will help expedite this rebuilding process. I am not happy being in this below-par physical state. Time to turn the tables.
