In the last post I discussed some major changes (mostly new drugs). I’ll conclude this series (for now) by describing the new normal. Of course, everybody has a lifelong health journey that lasts until the very last second, so there might be future posts, but it will be because of new things to report, not this specific condition and recovery.

Everything that you read or hear about before the surgery mentions two basic timelines:

• roughly 6 weeks (no less than 4) until you can drive (or sit in the front passenger seat for that matter)
• roughly 3 months until you are basically unrestricted in your physical activity

I can now add my experience to those timelines. I was cleared to drive after 6 weeks. We spent another week in NYC after that getting everything ready to return to VA (nearly 4 months after arriving).

I drove with more mindful concentration given the danger of having an airbag hit me in the chest. Thankfully, the ride back was uneventful.

The daily routine in the house is noticeably different than the routine in NYC had been. Getting used to it was fine, but it definitely required more attention.

We immediately resumed our normal social routines, which include a weekly neighbor dinner (in fact, we had one the very day we drove back) and a weekly men’s lunch (ROMEO: Real Old Men Eating Out). It was great to reconnect with all of them and to feel a sense of normalcy returning.

I still had to be very careful not to lift/push/pull too much weight, but every week got a little easier, and like the timelines above predicted, after 3 months (beginning of April for me), I really didn’t need to pay too much attention to it.

That’s not to say that everything is back to the way it was (far from it). But, there’s no fear of accidentally doing something too stupid. There are many reminders that this is a new normal and most definitely not the old normal.

One example that will likely be true for the rest of my life is sneezing. Whenever I sneeze (I’m out of the hospital for 10 months at this point), it feels like if the sneeze were just a tad harder, my rib cage would split apart completely. It won’t, and I don’t worry about that, but it absolutely feels like it would.

The slightest touch on the scar down the middle of my chest evokes feelings that I never experienced before in my life. There is zero pain associated with that, just an extremely strange feeling that I can’t describe. It can happen when my T-Shirt simply moves an inch to the side and rubs against the scar.

I’m told that this will likely never go away. My best friend (am I allowed to use that phrase at my age?) had quintuple bypass surgery 13 years ago, so he has a similar scar, and still feels it like I do all these years later.

I’m back to doing a daily routine of a mixture of Qigong and Yoga for 24 minutes. I haven’t missed a day since I restarted on April 1st. I walk a couple of miles a couple of times a week outside on a hilly path at high speed and I walk 50 flights of stairs once a week (up and down).

The one thing I haven’t done (and I know that I should), is lifting any kind of weights. I’m certainly cleared for it, and I know it would be good for me, but I haven’t had the interest. It’s not fear, simply disinterest. We’ll see if putting that in writing will motivate me in any way (for the moment, I doubt it).

The biggest surprise (and blessing) has been sleep. While I would hardly call myself a good sleeper, the change from 2019-2024 and now is nothing short of miraculous. On a typical night, I’ll get 5 hours of sleep (and a couple more of easy resting in bed). Occasionally, 6-7 hours (never uninterrupted, but at this point, still miraculous).

I still have some bad nights, but they are not frequent or quite as severe as they used to be.

Perhaps the last thing to note is my resting heart rate. I mentioned previously that it used to be very low. Pre-surgery, roughly 48 BPM (beats per minute). Occasionally, while sleeping, it would dip into the 30s, but mostly be in the very low 40s.

Post surgery, my resting heart rate was in the mid-70’s, and would spike into the 80s with the slightest bit of activity. The doctors weren’t concerned with that at all, since it’s not a very high BPM, but it annoyed me a little (not that I was ever physically uncomfortable), because I didn’t know if it would ever return to the old normal rate.

After a few months, it dropped to 65. A couple of months later it dropped into the 50s. Now it’s reliably back in the 40s. While it rarely got into the 30s during sleep, last night it did, for quite an extended period. I’m happy about it, though to repeat, I don’t really feel a specific difference as a result. It’s simply a psychological calmness.

In a month, I will have my first surgical follow-up since January. I expect that to go well. I also have my annual physical scheduled as well, and I look forward to seeing the results of the blood tests.

For all the trials and tribulations that I went through before and after the surgery, I feel extremely fortunate to have the care that I did, and to have made it to this point. I look forward to the future with joy and excitement, every single day!

In the last post I described my first two weeks of recovery post surgery. Unfortunately, I left out one very major detail, and one other item that I said I’d discuss in the previous post that I never did…

Let’s start with what I forgot to follow up on. Two posts ago I said that in the next post I would explain why the Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) didn’t end up being a big deal. I didn’t do that and now will.

When I got home, I realized that I didn’t have a single symptom of RA. I hadn’t thought about it in the ICU (where I didn’t have it either), but in the apartment, doing the things that normally were very uncomfortable at best, didn’t bother me. Of course, this was a blessing (a most necessary one), but it was also an enigma.

I didn’t see the Rheumatologist until nearly six weeks after the surgery. The symptoms hadn’t returned as yet, but were beginning to a bit in my hands (mostly fingers) only. I asked him what drugs could have been given to me during or after surgery that would have suppressed the symptoms this well, and he said “None!“.

He explained that it was almost definitely my own body producing cortisol levels way above normal, fighting to heal post surgery, that were overwhelming the normal immune system issues that were causing RA symptoms. He assured me that without a doubt, the RA would return.

Of course, he was correct. Still, it was dramatically milder, being only in my hands (recall that it was all over my body during November and December 2024). He wasn’t sanguine about that either. He said that if I left it untreated, it would eventually return everywhere.

He wanted me to start taking Methotrexate (MTX), but needed to check with my surgeon whether I was far enough from the surgery to start the medication. The surgeon said yes…

Now my dilemma. I don’t typically like taking medication, especially ones that could be lifelong affairs. He urged me to take it, saying that any deterioration in my condition could lead to permanent joint damage (as in irreversible). I told him I’d think about it and started reading everything I could about it.

I was still leaning heavily toward not taking it. I consulted with my godson who is a Hematology/Oncologist. He urged me to take it as well. He explained that all of the predicted side-effects were unlikely to affect me due to the dosage I would be getting.

I listened to both of them and started taking the medicine when we returned to VA in March and have been taking it ever since. My godson was correct that I had none of the side-effects that they warn you about (though I did have other potential side-effects that will be mentioned in a future post).

I still have RA, but it’s still only in the hands, and even there, almost exclusively in the fingers. I have no idea whether that would be the case without the MTX, or whether I would have deteriorated further without it. Is it arresting the deterioration, or doing nothing?

I tried to get my Rheumatologist to agree to letting me stop for a while and see. He preferred to up my dosage, claiming that it was too risky to stop the medication. We compromised on keeping the dosage the same…

While I didn’t have any physical symptoms from the MTX, there were things I needed to be mindful of. MTX can affect your liver (so far it has not affected mine), so you should avoid alcohol as much as possible. I haven’t had any since Christmas Eve 2024! You also can’t have any grapefruit. So I haven’t eaten that either.

Since this post is labeled Medications, I’ll continue with that, and then circle back to the opening paragraph topic.

For 24 years, I have resisted taking a statin. I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I’m one of the 25% of people who are lucky enough to be able to control their cholesterol levels through diet and exercise. My Cardiologist would still prefer me to take a statin, but I always said no, and became serious about my diet after each admonition.

When I had my surgical follow-up two weeks after surgery, I asked if I really needed to pay attention to my cholesterol level given that I only had a single 30% blockage and all of my other arteries were clear around the heart.

He said yes, since cholesterol entering the brain could do serious damage independent of any blockages. Darn…

Still, I intended to eat better to control it. When I saw my latest blood tests I was pleased with the cholesterol level. My Cardiologist was not. He said that these levels would have been acceptable before the surgery, but post-surgery, they wanted to see them lower than normal, in particular the LDL, which he said I would not be able to get down to a good level through diet alone.

He urged me to take a statin, and again after consulting with my godson, I finally relented. I’ve been on one since April, again with no side-effects. Different than the MTX, the statin is working wonders (from a numbers point of view). Six weeks after starting it, my cholesterol levels were down to exactly where the Cardiologist wanted them.

OK, circling back to the first paragraph…

While I didn’t have any RA symptoms, I had one excruciating problem (independent of the previously mentioned bathroom ones). My lower back muscles hurt like heck every time I needed to use them (getting in and out of bed, adjusting my position in bed, sitting down and standing up).

When the surgical nurse practitioner came to the apartment, I asked her if they had to cut through the muscles in my back during surgery. She said that there were no incisions on the back. The issue was more obvious (after the fact).

After they saw your breast bone, they use a spreader to keep the two halves of the rib cage apart, so that they can access the heart and ascending aorta more easily.

Your back muscles are connected to the back of the ribs. As the front of the ribs get spread apart, the back muscles get squeezed together. That’s a position they can’t get into naturally, so they had never been in that position ever before.

My surgery lasted five hours, and then I was wheeled back in and opened up again, though I don’t know if a spreader was used the second time…

Suffice it to say, those muscles were revolting over their treatment. It took three full weeks for them to start to relax and another few weeks after that to fully recover (thankfully, they did, which is why I even forgot to mention it before).

I can’t imagine what it would have been like if the RA had returned in full (throughout my body) at the same time as the back muscles were refusing to work. I’m grateful that I only needed to deal with one of them at a time.

This is another (typically) long post, so I’ll end it here and continue with the recovery and return to VA in the next one.

I ended the last post with a spoiler alert. We’ll get there shortly, but a few facts need to be relayed first.

After being released from the hospital, a number of services were offered. A dedicated nurse practitioner who is part of the actual surgical team. She (in this case) came to the apartment once, two days after I was released, and followed up with me on the phone a number of times.

She was very concerned about a few things and prescribed some additional medication.

Separately, Northwell offered 30 days of in-home nursing (not part of the surgical team). I ended up with eight in-home visits split between two different nurses (one male, twice, and a female the other six times).

I was also offered a physical therapy evaluation, with regular follow-ups should they be required. The physical therapist came nine days after I was released, and discharged me after examining me.

Back to our recovery tale. I was released on Tuesday afternoon. As mentioned previously, by Friday night, I still had no relief. I was actually sitting on the toilet on Friday night, patiently waiting (recall that I was not permitted to bear down) when the phone rang. It was an unexpected call from my cardiologist who wanted to know how the recovery was going.

I explained my situation, and he said that he believed that it was pressure from my bladder and my rectum pressing against each other, telling me that the area down there is extremely narrow in a male.

As you know (if you’ve read the previous posts) this is exactly what my theory was all along. My cardiologist suggested it without me mentioning that, and he’s the first person to give it any credence!

He asked what medication I was on, and in addition to the normal post-surgery stuff, I told him I was on Senna (a prescription laxative). I was also on Lasix (a prescription diuretic). I told him that I was also eating a few prunes and drinking some prune juice daily.

He told me to continue all of that, but also add Milk of Magnesia (I hadn’t heard that phrase since childhood!).

The next morning I had my first my first visit with the regular nurse (male). He examined me and took my vitals. I explained my issue to him and without any hesitation, he said that I should continue my existing medication but also add Milk of Magnesia! Back-to-back identical recommendations in a 12 hour period.

Lois went out to get the Milk of Magnesia and I took the recommended dose every few hours. Sometime later that same day (Saturday), everything opened up. It’s impossible to know whether the Milk of Magnesia was the tipping point, or the time had simply come for some much-needed relief, but at this point, I was simply overjoyed for the relief.

That said, once started, there was a lot to clear out, and it just kept coming and coming… I was still running to the bathroom as frequently as before, but now it was more of a race to get there in time…

After a single accident (thankfully not anything too serious), I asked Lois to buy me a box of adult pampers (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d be writing in public!). I wore them 24×7 for a few weeks, and of course never had a single accident while wearing them, but it gave me psychological comfort to not have to worry.

While the relief was massive, the pendulum had swung very far in the other direction. That was still 100x better than the previous situation, but it wasn’t pleasant.

After a number of days at this new extreme, I returned to a more irregular situation. Sometimes normal, sometimes tough to get going, and sometimes too easy to get going.

I spoke to a good friend on the phone (same person who got me into Quantum Biology) and he strongly suggested eating fresh papaya every day. Since I love papaya (and hadn’t had it in years), I saw no downside. I ate it every day, and sure enough, I was mostly regular from then on.

I had my first foray out of the apartment eight days after my release, for a check-up with the surgeon. I passed with flying colors and he told me that he didn’t need to see me again until the one year mark!

Four days later I had my first social visit in the apartment. Things felt a little bit more normal after that (though, of course, they were anything but normal yet).

A week after my surgical check-up, I had my second foray out of the apartment, this time to see my cardiologist, who also was very pleased with my ongoing recovery.

I’ll continue with at least one more post on the recovery, quite possibly two or three, taking us up to the present.

I ended the last post in the ICU. While recovery starts there (from the minute you’re wheeled out of surgery), the longer term recovery really starts at home.

In the ICU, you’re told what to do and monitored to see that you’re doing it. Also, you’re not in your own habitat with your own routines, so it’s easier to comply with directions.

I had only one real fear in recovering at home: would the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) rear it’s ugly head and stop me from doing the things I needed to do to recover (including simply getting out of bed).

That turned out to be unwarranted, which I’ll explain in the next post. It was the thing that I should have been afraid of but wasn’t, that really got me.

I’ve already mentioned that the nurse on the last day didn’t want to release me due to my full bladder. I also mentioned that the other end was full as well, and that I was 100% convinced that they were pressing against each other, complicating the release of either.

Our friend from VA had to leave the day before (she stayed with Lois for five nights) and another friend from VA came up to take her place. That friend made a heroic effort (and succeeded) since early flights from VA were canceled due to snow in NYC. She took a 5am Amtrak and arrived a couple of hours after the first friend departed.

I was released the next day, so Lois, our friend and I piled into a cab to head back to the apartment. I had to hug a heart pillow given to me by the ICU, in case there were any sudden stops. In fact, we were going to need to stay in NYC for 4-6 weeks (minimum), since you’re not permitted to drive for that long after open heart surgery.

It has nothing to do with your ability to drive, but rather that if you end up in an accident, the air bag could literally kill you, given the state of your breast bone (and heart). For that reason, you’re not even allowed to be in the passenger seat of a car, though you are permitted to be in the back seat (it would have been really hard to get home otherwise).

Since Lois doesn’t drive, we were going to be in NYC for the first part of the recovery. Multiple friends offered to come up from VA on a bus/train/plane and drive us back in our car (so it would be home with us), but as I pointed out, then we’d be stuck in the house, since I still couldn’t drive, and neither does Lois. Being in Manhattan made sense all around and worked out well.

When we first stepped into the apartment, I was convinced that I could prove that I was right about pushing so hard to be released from the ICU. In other words, I headed straight for the bathroom.

One thing I haven’t mentioned before, is that a giant complicating factor in getting your bowels moving post surgery is the strongest admonition to not… bear… down… when you’re trying to go.

It’s not something you forget for long, because if you even consider it for a millisecond, your chest reminds you that it’s not going to play along.

Well, the older you get, the harder it is to go under the best of circumstances without bearing down. Throw in the effect of the drugs, the lingering effects of the anesthesia and the general stoppage already described, and it was not a pleasant experience to even attempt a movement.

Still, I knew I had to, and my first try yielded a modicum of success. I was sure that it would be smooth sailing from that point on, and was convinced that I made the right decision to come home.

That was Tuesday afternoon.

I did not have another successful movement the rest of the week (through Friday night). Worse, largely because of that, and whatever other psychological issues were likely floating around related to that, I barely could get the bladder working either. It was still dribbles, like it was in the ICU.

It felt like complete torture to me (though I certainly don’t want to equate it to actual torture). There were two additional problems that made it so bad: 1) the feeling of needing to go was constant and 2) getting in and out of bed and trying to sit and stand at the toilet was itself extremely difficult.

The fact that it was practically every five minutes (rarely more than 15!) between tries, all unsuccessful, is what turned an extremely difficult situation into perceived torture.

I left out an additional admonition to the driving. For the first month of recovery, I wasn’t to lift any weight greater than 5 pounds. For the second month, 15 pounds. For the third month, 25 pounds. After that, all restrictions would be lifted.

It’s not as simple as lifting. You are not to put the equivalent amount of pressure on your arms/chest (and therefore *hands), that would be like lifting a 5 pound weight.

That means that you can’t get out of bed by putting your hands on the mattress and pushing up, because I can assure you that it is more than 5 pounds of pressure, and you’ll feel it in your chest instantly. So, getting out of bed (and in for that matter), means sitting on the edge, and leaning forward a drop, and then very carefully lifting entirely with your legs.

The same goes for lowering yourself on the toilet, and getting back up from there. So, going multiple times every hour (without success no less!), was torture.

Most unfortunately, that continued throughout the night as well, so I was also operating on nearly zero sleep.

The consequence to all of this is that even though I’m generally disciplined, and fully expected to follow all of the orders/admonitions while recovering at home, a couple of the most important ones fell by the wayside (nearly completely).

Those two were: 1) use an Incentive Spirometer 10 times an hour (or roughly every 6 minutes!) and 2) walk the halls in the building (or preferably outside if the winter weather cooperated), at least twice a day for 45 minutes minimum.

I barely used the Incentive Spirometer (even though I knew how important it was) and I walked for 15-20 minutes occasionally, not every day.

I knew it was very bad to avoid those things, but I was practically going out of my mind. Of course, I didn’t want to return to the ICU for catheterization either, which is why I was spending all of my energy on relieving myself (as yet, unsuccessfully).

I know that this is an unpleasant topic (which I’m doing my best to handle euphemistically), so I’ll end this post here and continue with the recovery (which, spoiler, has a happy ending) in the next post.

The last post was very long and concluded with me being awake in the ICU. This one will detail my stay in the ICU. We’ll start with an incident which occurred before I woke up, but took place in the ICU after the RTOR (if you don’t know what that acronym means, you didn’t read the last post…).

One of the things that was inserted into my body while I was in surgery was an external pacemaker. What? Yes, wires were attached to my heart. Those wires came out of my body (through an incision that they made precisely for this reason) and those wires were attached to a metallic black toddler-size shoe box. It was heavy. The box had a dial on it, where they could adjust the pacemaker, attempting to make my heart beat faster or slower.

While I was still unconscious, at some point, the doctors were nervously trying to adjust my heart rhythm. They were worried that it was too low. They kept turning the dial trying to get my heart to beat faster.

Luckily (for me), two things were true:

1) They did this in front of Lois and the two friends who were in the room with me (again, even though I had no idea)
2) I tend to go on (and on, and sometimes even more on…) about certain things.

One of those things is the fact that my normal resting heart rate (pre-surgery) was around 48 beats per minute (bpm). When sleeping, it could easily get down to the high 30s!

One of the people who had to endure my endless prattle about it is our very good friend Kevin, who happened to be there in the ICU while the doctors were nervously fiddling with the dial.

He was fascinated with the box and asked them what it was and what they were doing, and when they explained it to him, he informed them that my resting heart rate was typically in the upper 40s.

They stopped being nervous and stopped fiddling, and were satisfied that all was fine. I have no idea what would have happened if Kevin wasn’t there, or if he had stopped paying attention to my incessant prattling, but thank goodness he remembered and the doctors believed him!

Last thing to note before relating my awake experiences…

I’m generally not a fearful person and I typically don’t spend time worrying about things I can’t control. One major exception to that is a life-long fear of being catheterized in my nether region. For decades, it was an irrational fear, given that I’ve never had surgery, and there was no reason to expect that it would happen to me.

Yet, if someone even mentioned it in passing, or it was part of a scene on a fictional TV show/movie, I’d have a reaction, which was bordering on physical discomfort!

Before surgery, I asked a good friend who had been through many procedures, including open heart surgery twice, whether I would be catheterized (can you imagine how naive I was to think there was even a slight possibility that I wouldn’t be?). He said that of course I would be, and that it would be by far the least of the things I would be concerned about.

Of course, he was correct. In fact, once you are in the ICU for an extended period of time, you welcome the catheter, though only if they insert it while you’re unconscious, which thankfully was true for me.

Everyone in the Lenox Hill Hospital ICU was fantastic. Caring, communicative, upbeat, etc. You are completely dependent on them, so that’s a big win, to be taken care of by people who actually care.

There are basically three positions/activities that happen daily for an ambulatory patient. 1) lay flat on your back when you’re in bed, 2) sit in a chair most of the day, 3) walk back and forth in the hallway to get everything moving in your body and prove to them that you have your strength and mobility (or they won’t release you from the ICU).

Amazingly, they start the walking on day one, or at least they try to get the patients up and about on day one. Given that my main form of exercise are long walks (at high speed) and 50 flights of stairs once a week, I had no trouble doing the walk on the first day. The only annoying part of it is how many wires and tubes were still coming out of my body, that needed to be attached to a machine, which I pushed back and forth in the hall.

They were probably just being kind, but everyone who helped me walk, or even observed me walking, commented that they couldn’t believe how well I was doing on my first day. Of course, each day I did it multiple times and for longer and faster walks.

I was lucky enough to have near 100% visitor coverage during waking hours. Lois was there every day as were a number of friends. The days really went by quickly.

As I’ve mentioned a number of times already, I was a very poor sleeper. What I don’t recall mentioning is the fact that I couldn’t sleep on my back, even when I was willing to try for hours on end.

All of a sudden, that would become a critical skill to have, since you are not permitted to sleep on your side or stomach post open heart surgery, since your rib cage was sawed in half and needs to mend without the extra pressure of any kind of twist.

That turned out to not be the most critical thing, since sleeping in the ICU would be a good trick to pull off under any circumstances. Not only is there always something going on in the hall, but a few times every hour, there is something going on in your room!

People are constantly coming in and out of the room to check on the monitors and most importantly check on your catheter output and empty the bag if necessary. They wake you up a couple of times a night to take medicine (assuming you actually fell asleep).

Starting the second day, they also take a chest X-Ray in the middle of the night, every night, while you’re laying in bed on your back. Yes, they wake you (or the process wakes you if you happened to be asleep) in order to get it done. It’s fast and efficient (amazingly), but still, nighttime is not rest time…

I wasn’t really hungry, but they obviously want you to eat. I forced myself to eat breakfast and lunch, but often just picked at dinner. Surprisingly, the food was very good. I had a fruit plate every morning and salmon and sweet potato mash for lunch every day. I hope they serve the same food to the staff in the cafeteria, because it was quite well done.

For the first few days, there is literally no urge to move your bowels (or rather, I had no urge). That’s a blessing, in that the logistics of doing that in an ICU room are less than pleasant. Of course, I was forcing food down my throat daily, and it was definitely building up whether I wanted it to or not. At least the catheter took care of the other end…

On my third awake day (fourth day if you include the surgery day), the catheter came out. It was a very weird feeling, but surprisingly, it didn’t hurt. From that point on, I was mostly peeing into a plastic bottle, though occasionally I used an actual toilet.

I didn’t find out for another two days that I was still supposed to use the bottle, note how much I filled up, and only then spill it into the toilet. That became a bone of contention at the very end of my stay…

I had a couple of semi-successful movements as well, which were unpleasant to have to schedule (in the sense of requiring assistance to get to the toilet, due to all of the wires and tubes!).

The next day, the pacemaker wires were pulled out. Just like with the catheter, I was warned to brace myself, but ultimately, it didn’t hurt, it was just an extremely weird feeling.

I had four drainage tubes sticking out from the middle of my torso. Each had a rubber bulb on the end, to catch the fluid. They would empty those on a regular basis. The same day that the pacemaker wires came out, they also removed three of the four drainage tubes (leaving one in just in case). Once again, no pain but a very weird feeling (the tubes were much longer than you would think).

The next morning (fifth day out from surgery), they told me that there was a good chance that I would be released that day. I was surprised, because all of the pre-surgery information implied that you first get moved to a non-ICU room before finally getting released.

Apparently, I was doing well enough (with the walking and not having pain), that they thought it would be OK for me to go home (which I was extremely looking forward to). They took out the final drainage tube and monitored me closely for another hour to make sure there were no issues.

That morning was the only shift that I had a male nurse assigned to me. He was fantastic (as were all of the female nurses I had previously). Late in the morning, he brought in a bunch of release paperwork for me to sign. I was ecstatic.

Then we hit a snag. He said that before I could be released, I needed to void enough into the plastic bottle to empty my bladder. No matter how many times I tried, it wasn’t enough to satisfy him (by multiple orders of magnitude). He said that he couldn’t sign off on my release until I emptied my bladder.

I explained to him that the environment was not conducive to accomplish that, but that if I was home, and completely relaxed, I’d have success. In fact, I was specific in telling him that I felt that it was the physical pressure of the bladder and the rectum (sorry for being so graphic) pressing against each other, that was causing both ends to be uncooperative. I said that if one were to give, so would the other…

He remained unconvinced. Empty the bladder, or stay in the hospital. In fact, if I couldn’t empty it in the hospital either, it would likely require a catheterization again!

I told him that I understood, but that I would likely release myself against medical advice. He contacted the surgical team and asked them to weigh in. While we waited for them to make a decision (it took a couple of hours), he wheeled in an ultrasound machine and pressed it against my bladder, proving to me that it was nearly full to the brim.

When the surgical team arrived, they said that they would reluctantly release me, under the one condition that I would immediately return on my own to the hospital for catheterization, if I couldn’t void in the house after a reasonable amount of time. I promised, and I was released…

The next post will be about home recovery.

I ended the last post with a tiny spoiler, which is now memorialized in this post’s title. I’ll start with the final lead-up to the big day.

Exactly one week before the surgery (December 26th, 2024), I had to undergo a Cardiac Catheterization Test. It’s a procedure that let’s them look at the arteries around the heart to see whether there are any existing blockages, and to determine whether there might be complications during the surgery.

It’s an extraordinary procedure. If they had discovered a blockage, they could have inserted a stent right then, without having to open me up further than the tiny incision they made to insert the catheter.

If I didn’t need the ascending aorta replaced, they could have replaced my aortic valve with the same exact catheter procedure they were doing to simply look around!

The tiny incision was made on my right inner arm, right above my wrist. Thankfully, it worked, because the alternate entry point is the groin (not something I was excited to experience).

Most of my arteries were (are) clear, with a single one showing a 30% blockage, which the surgeons weren’t concerned about. My PCP on the other hand has flagged that as something that needs to be monitored over time, and is one of his major concerns over my cholesterol levels post surgery (we’ll get to that in a future post).

Prior to this test, if you had asked me if I had ever taken fentanyl, I would have definitively said no. To ensure that I didn’t experience any pain during the procedure, I was given a tiny dose of fentanyl (not enough to put me out, but enough to not feel more than “something is going on somewhere inside of me”).

In addition, I was given a dose of Midazolam. It’s meant to relax you when having minor surgery. It was explained to me that if anything traumatic happened during the surgery (psychologically, not physically), I would likely not remember it. Basically, it’s a feel good drug.

After the procedure, they monitor you in the hospital for a couple of hours, then make you walk for 30 minutes and void your bladder. If you can do all that, and not develop a bleed from the incision, they release you. I passed, I was released.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but prior to this, I never had any surgery of any kind (major or minor). I just passed the minor part, but was one week away from a more serious undertaking.

My last sip of liquor occurred on Christmas Eve (I’m a social drinker, never without company, so stopping that was trivial). I was cautioned to try and avoid as much contact with people as possible, since getting sick before surgery could throw the schedule off.

On January 1, 2025, one of our closest friends flew up from VA to stay with Lois while I recovered in the hospital. At the crack of dawn on the 2nd, the three of us got into a cab and went to Lenox Hill Hospital.

After filling out a lot of paperwork, I was taken into a pre-op room where my chest was shaved, and some areas in my nether regions as well, in case they needed to insert a cardiac catheter through my groin.

The anesthesiologist came in to explain to me what was about to happen. Shortly thereafter, I walked into the operating room and lay down on the table. The surgical team was already in there and scrubbed up.

At 7:30am, the anesthesiologist asked me where my favorite vacation spot was. I told him I was retired for a long time and my favorite spot was home. He asked me to imagine where I might want to go, and without much hesitation, I said Tahiti. He asked me to close my eyes and try to visualize what it would be like to be in Tahiti.

Within 10 seconds of closing my eyes, I have zero recollection of anything (including some pretty dramatic events) until I opened my eyes again in the ICU.

You might wonder how I know there were dramatic events if I have no recollection of them. In addition to being told about them by multiple people, I also read the chart in my patient portal where the surgeon detailed it as well.

I was in surgery for roughly five hours. During that time they replaced my aortic valve with a bovine valve (cow). I only found out two weeks later what that really means, and I will relate it in another post. They also replaced my ascending aorta, with a 100% synthetic one (also discovered two weeks later).

On to the part that I was told about but don’t remember. After the surgery, they wheeled me into the ICU. Apparently, I was responsive, though I couldn’t talk due to a breathing tube that was still fully inserted. I do not remember anything or anyone during that (very brief) time.

Lois, our friend from VA and a very good friend from NYC were all in the ICU room waiting for me. All three of them felt that I looked too pale (white as a ghost was one description), and were worried. A minute later the surgeons came in to check on me. They too weren’t comfortable with how I looked. They ordered me to be wheeled back into the operating room.

This is noted in my chart as RTOR (Return to OR!). They opened me up again, and quickly found a very small bleed. They closed that up and within 40 minutes, I was back in the ICU. Lois and friends said that I looked 100% better, with full color having returned that quickly.

I’m guessing that it was roughly 2pm on the 2nd at this point. I’m also guessing that they fully sedated me a second time to open me up and work on the bleed, which would explain why I didn’t open my eyes again until 5:15am on January 3rd, 2025. From my perspective, I was out for 21 hours and 45 minutes.

Given all of my multi-year sleep issues, that was the only glorious part of this entire experience.

On the other hand, waking up was one of the worst parts of the experience. I believed that I was fully prepared for my part of the waking up process, but I was wrong.

Before the surgery, Northwell Health requires you to watch two separate videos. They’re both on YouTube, so anyone can watch them. One basically shows you what happens inside your body (where the valve is, etc.). The other is a 13 minute video that shows you everything you will experience as a patient before and after surgery.

It’s an exceptional video and while I wasn’t looking forward to any of it, it was incredibly calming to know what the ICU room would look like, what the typical post-surgery challenges would be, etc.

One of the things they concentrate on is the waking up process. They show you a patient with a breathing tube in. They explain that it is important to get the breathing tube out as quickly as possible once you wake up. They prepare you well for what that entails (or so I thought!).

When I opened my eyes, I saw Lois sitting right next to my bed (she slept in the chair in my ICU room). There were at least three medical professionals standing over me as well. They explained that it was time to remove the breathing tube, and I nodded my understanding (it’s critical not to attempt to speak while it’s in!).

The procedure involves them pulling the tube out close to 90% of the way (I might be misremembering the exact percentage). Once it’s that far out, they require you (the patient) to breathe on your own. If you demonstrate that, they pull the tube out the rest of the way. I assume that if there are issues, they reinsert the tube.

I believed that I was breathing perfectly well on my own (and pretty proud of it!). Apparently, they didn’t perceive it the same way, and kept urging me to breathe. Unfortunately, the next part was excruciating…

The video never dealt with this, so I was unprepared for it and hadn’t warned anyone in advance. I have one of the worst gag reflexes of anyone I know. Now that the tube was 90% out, and I was breathing deeply on my own, I started to gag badly. I couldn’t explain to them what was happening, because I was disciplined enough not to speak.

When they asked “Are you OK?”, I violently shook my head “No!”. I was as close to a full-blown panic as you could be, while still sort of being in control (because I knew what was happening, though they didn’t).

No one in the room had the authority to simply pull the tube out the rest of the way! I heard them discuss it, and one of them left the room to find the person in charge of the floor to get permission. Unfortunately, that person was asleep (I blame no one, seriously!).

It took another few minutes of them trying desperately to calm me down saying things like “This isn’t unusual, lots of people go through this, try to relax and breathe, and we’ll be able to pull it out the rest of the way”. As soothing as the senior nurse was (and she was amazing to me throughout my stay in the ICU), it didn’t really help, because they didn’t know why I was having a problem.

At some point, I realized what was happening. I was breathing really deeply through my nose, feeling my belly fill up and rise, and then breathing it out, proudly. Whenever I did that, I could feel them tense up like something was wrong.

When I breathed through my mouth (which wasn’t often), I realized they were encouraged that things might be turning around. I tried to breathe only through my mouth, and sure enough, shortly thereafter they pulled the tube out completely. The nightmare was over.

In the next post, I’ll detail the recovery in the ICU.

I finished the last post with a bang, sharing my brand new Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). I hadn’t actually been diagnosed yet, I simply had all of the symptoms.

We headed to NYC on November 3rd, 2024, with the intention of staying until the day after Christmas. This would be our longest stay since we moved to VA in 2015!

I had scheduled my annual physical with my primary care physician (PCP) who is also my cardiologist (you already know that if you’ve been with me in this series of posts) for the day after we arrived.

Aside from the fact that having an annual physical is good in general, and specifically for someone with heart issues, I had an additional (very foolish) motivation for wanting to see my cardiologist.

Forgetting the RA for the moment, all of the QB (Quantum Biology for those of you who didn’t read the last post) stuff had me down to 173 pounds (I started this journey at 265 pounds, 23 years earlier). In all of those years, the lowest weight he’d seen me at was probably 195 pounds, but more typically, my best average would have been closer to 205.

It was foolish, because I expected praise for being such a good boy, rather than doing it for all the right reasons and not caring what he or anyone else said.

He did comment immediately on the weight, but within minutes of examining me, he had some concerns and scheduled a Stress Echo test for the following week (something I’d done a couple of times over the years). The first post in this series covered the first Stress Echo test, which was brutal.

Given all of my exercise and weight loss over the years, I knew I’d do better, but I didn’t know how much he’d keep stressing me, so I still had some trepidation about the test.

In between those two visits, he got the results of my blood work from the initial annual checkup.

Before we even got to the test, he very gravely delivered the bad news about my change in diet due to the QB regimen. When I was on Atkins, my cholesterol peaked at 276 (a number that concerned him greatly!). This time, it was 319. I honestly thought he might have a heart attack right in front of me. Obviously, he ordered me to change my diet immediately (and I have…).

As for the stress test, I passed with flying colors. I was breathing very heavily at the end, but I was never breathless, and I never needed to run to keep up with the treadmill. We were both very impressed and he stopped the test before I ever got stressed! (there goes my ego again…)

The second he stopped the treadmill, I got on the exam table for the full ecocardiogram. I had no way of knowing what the readings indicated, until we spoke in his office afterward.

The anchor dropped immediately. He said that the time had come to replace my Aortic Valve, and that it was likely I would need the Ascending Aorta repaired as well. He wanted to see me a week later after the rest of the tests were in.

When I came in the following week (on my birthday, yay), he referred me to two different surgeons. He explained why I might choose one over the other, and given the criteria, I knew which one I would contact.

I made an appointment for December 3rd, 2024. That would involve three tests (CAT scan, X-Ray and a deeper Echo of the Carotid Arteries) followed by a physical exam by the surgeon.

Separately, I made an appointment for December 5th, 2024 to see the rheumatologist that my PCP referred me to as well (I hope you didn’t forget that I was suffering from RA, which was no small thing, completely independent of my heart issues…).

When I met the surgeon after the tests, I knew I made the right choice. However, after going over the tests in detail, he explained to me what repair the ascending aorta involved. It was not a repair, it was a wholesale replacement.

While he was capable of doing the surgery, he had someone else on staff that was the head of Aortic Surgery, and he suggested I meet with him instead. That meeting happened on December 14th, 2024, and I really liked him as well, feeling confident that I chose the correct facility for the operation (Lenox Hill Hospital, part of Northwell Health Systems).

I asked if I could delay the surgery until the Spring (which would have been our natural return to NYC, given that our plan was to head home on December 26th). I was strongly advised not to delay…

I scheduled the surgery for January 2nd, 2025 and all future plans were thrown in the air for obvious reasons.

Separately, on December 5th I saw the rheumatologist. After a very thorough exam, he sent me for many X-Rays and blood work as well. Everything came back pointing to RA, with no doubt (there are many kinds of arthritis).

Unfortunately, he couldn’t prescribe any medicine yet, because of my upcoming surgery. The most common medication is an immunosupressant. That’s exactly the opposite of what you need to recover from surgery. That meant suffering with the RA for at least another six weeks. Yay…

The next post will deal with the surgery and the immediate aftermath.

In my last post I discussed my sleep issues. I also mentioned my Intermittent Fasting (IF) which was very positive. This post will concentrate on some very major life changes that were compressed into a four month stretch.

We have very good friends who lived in Brooklyn and we used to see them regularly. Roughly 15 years ago they moved to California. For a number of years we saw the husband regularly (a couple of times a year) when business brought him back east. A few times his wife came as well.

Mostly, we kept up via text/email/phone. During Covid, that contact became more infrequent (not unusual for a number of our relationships). When we did catch up, it was typically a lengthy phone call.

In June 2024 one such phone call occurred. Lois spoke to the husband for an hour, then passed the phone to me. My conversation with him ended up being closer to two hours and was eye opening and life changing.

During our general catch-up, I mentioned my sleep issues. He asked me if I ever heard of Quantum Biology (QB). I hadn’t. He warned me that if he started to tell me about it, it would lead to a very large rabbit hole, and that he was happy to hold his tongue if I wasn’t ready to be pushed in. Guess what my answer was?

Since you can read better descriptions of QB than I could ever give, I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader who has any interest. Aside from our very long discussion, he pointed me to a podcast (I believe there is a video version as well, likely on YouTube, but definitely on Spotify) of one of the main proponents of QB (Dr. Jack Kruse), talking to Rick Rubin (host of the podcast Tetragrammaton) and Andrew Huberman.

It’s roughly a six hour yell-a-thon, spread over two episodes (4-ish then 2-ish). Jack is a very passionate speaker, who doesn’t really let others speak much. That said, he can be a fascinating and convincing speaker (as well as an annoying one). I admit that I bought the basic concepts hook, line and sinker!

Again, if you have the slightest interest in QB, you should read about it from better sources than me. At the highest level I’ll simply say that it’s critical to get natural light in your eyes and on your body at specific times of the day. There are many other things you can and should do to optimize the cells in your body, but simply doing the light correctly will take you a long way.

I was insanely down the rabbit hole. To some extent for worse rather than better (I won’t leave that hanging, but I’ll defer that for a bit). I subscribed to many podcasts that dealt with QB and couldn’t get enough (thank goodness I am retired, as I had the time to study, or rather waste, depending on your perspective).

I changed my lifestyle immediately. I was outside every single morning catching the sunrise. I haven’t worn sunglasses (not even for a second) since July 2024, even though prior to that, I was overly light-sensitive!

While I was exercising regularly walking outside prior to this new revelation, I stopped wearing a hat (I shave my head completely) and welcomed the sun like a long-lost friend. My skin darkened but never burned.

I felt great and loved the new routine. Unfortunately, sleep didn’t get much better. I was disappointed. On the other hand, another issue improved immeasurably.

I won’t go into too much detail, but for quite a while, perhaps partially given my age, my digestion wasn’t what it used to be. It’s almost a meme to talk about how much time elder men spend on the throne, but it’s often the case that the struggle is real…

However, with my new routine, and zero changes in diet (I was still doing IF with the same exact foods), I became regular and better (I’ll leave it at that). This was a miracle, and could be attributed only to my new sun worship, because nothing else changed.

It proved (to me) how important the connection is between sunlight and biology (one of the main tenets of QB) that it could affect my digestion as quickly and completely as it did.

I wonder how my life would be now (a year later) if I had simply stopped there. But, I already said “for better or worse“ earlier, so let’s keep going.

As I said, I was listening to so many different podcasts, with so many different experts, that I continued to modify my routine, searching for better health (generically speaking), but most importantly, better sleep (the nirvana I was actually chasing).

I should have taken it as a much bigger red flag when some of the experts had 180 degree opposing views from each other. Unfortunately, often both sides sounded extremely logical and convincing. To be clear, I realized the problem, but felt like I could use logic to discern the right path, leaning heavily toward the wisdom of Jack Kruse specifically, if he was on one side of the debate.

Kruse himself was in a way at fault for my making too many changes. He’s pretty clear that the light is the most important aspect of health, and if you do nothing else, that should be it (it’s way more complicated than I laid out above, so be aware that I’m not trying to teach anyone how to adhere to QB principles!).

There are other things that you can do (according to Kruse) that can be very beneficial to health, but they get progressively less important as you go down the list. Near the top of the list (following light) are cold exposure (he takes regular ice baths), heat exposure (saunas), and avoiding Non-native Eletro-Magnetic Fields (nnEMF).

I stopped touching the hot water faucet in the shower. I took very cold showers (nowhere near ice bath temperatures, but cold nonetheless), from July 2024 until nearly the end of October 2024 (even when it was already cold outside!). It was uncomfortable each time in the beginning of the shower, but perfectly fine by the end of each one.

Throughout September and October, when I went outside in the morning, I stood barefoot (learning about grounding in many of my podcasts) in shorts, with no shirt on (every single morning), in 30 degree weather. It was cold (very cold), but to be honest, it didn’t bother me at all, I was cold adapted, just like I adapted to no sunglasses as well.

You might wonder how long I was out there in the mornings. On average, around 45 minutes. I listened to QB podcasts while facing the rising sun (going deeper down the rabbit hole every day…).

I tried cutting out as much nnEMF at night, hoping that would help my sleep. I was either unsuccessful in reducing it enough, or that wasn’t my issue, so I eventually reverted to my normal setup in the bedroom.

I used Blue Light Blocking glasses all day and even darker ones when watching TV at night (so as not to give my body the wrong circadian signals). It didn’t help. I changed bulbs. It didn’t help (at least not the sleep, but I did somehow prefer the different light, even if it was all just psychological).

In sixth place on Kruse’s list (yes, I skipped mentioning numbers 4 and 5) is food. He’d be the first to tell you that if you were religious about the first five things on the list, you could (reasonably safely) ignore anyone’s advice on food, including his. Of course, he still has a lot of advice on food, so why not follow that as well? (uh oh…).

He has very specific advice on food. Much of it derives from his praise of Terry Wahls, a medical doctor who relieved most of her Multiple Sclerosis (MS) symptoms by changing her diet. I read one of the earliest books Kruse wrote (when he was more focused on food), and that led me to read Terry Wahls’ book as well.

It’s the first thing I regret changing for two main reasons, only one of which I’ll mention here (the second one will be in the next post).

My main complaint is that both of them (and many other QB experts) said that eating a meal within 30 minutes of waking up is extremely important to set your circadian rhythm in motion, and to fuel your mitochondria for the day.

As I’ve mentioned a number of times now, I was well into my third year of IF, which I was loving every bit as much as I did when I began. Following this QB advice would necessitate stopping my IF lifestyle. I didn’t have to do it, since Kruse places it sixth on the list of things to do…

I switched to a protein rich breakfast. Lois and I started cooking together (for me, her eating habits didn’t change), something we hadn’t done in many years. In fact, I never had, though Lois used to cook for me/us early on. I was eating super healthily (according to QB tenets, but not necessarily right for me…).

I was feeling great, and even though I was clearly eating more (three meals a day now), I started losing weight again (while feeling stronger and better). QB was truly miraculous (in my opinion).

Pre-pandemic, we typically spent four months in NYC (every third month), so March, June, September and December. Post-pandemic was much more haphazard, including going 16 months without visiting NYC at all (I wonder why…). 2024 was going to be different, as we were planning on spending November and December in NYC due to having company coming in waves throughout those two months.

The last week of October was extremely cold in VA (where we live). So much so that I took my first hot shower and shortened my stay outside in the morning to 15 minutes (still shirtless and barefoot though, in 20 degrees).

Out of the clear blue, without a hint, I developed joint pain all over. It was in my fingers, wrists, elbows, knees, toes, and even the bottom of my feet. Getting out of bed in the morning was a chore, because simply standing on my feet first thing was painful.

Since I’m going to end this post here, I’ll jump ahead and let you know that I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. The next post will cover what got me started on this “Health Journey” series to begin with.

My last post took us up to the pandemic. This one will back up a bit. It will also go through mid-2024, even though the last post claimed (incorrectly) that this one would conclude in 2022.

In late 2019, out of the clear blue, sleep started to elude me. I had a few nights of zero sleep, but mostly, I averaged 1-3 hours a night.

That’s obviously bad (on every possible level), but making it worse is the fact that my amazing wife can’t stand me getting out of bed before any official semblance of morning. If I try to sneak out of bed, she’ll claim to be up and leave the bed as well (true to this day!).

My guilt overwhelms me, and I simply lay in bed for hours on end, wide awake, not moving. I only know now, in retrospect, after getting a smart watch and a smart ring, that she might have saved me from shaving years off my life. It turns out that this wakeful resting was nearly as good as sleep in a number of ways (measured by my heart rate, SPO2, body temperature, etc.).

The first question that people asked me back then was: “What are you anxious about?”. My answer was nothing. My mind wasn’t spinning thinking about anything in particular. In fact, one of the things that made laying there tolerable was that it was also somehow meditative (too many hours in a row if you ask me, but still, a possible positive spin on it).

The next question: “What changed?”. Again, nothing I could put my finger on. But, I decided to make changes to see if I could isolate the problem.

I cut out coffee completely for at least six months with zero positive affect on sleep. I cut out liquor (which I know has a poor effect on my sleep, even though it puts me to sleep more easily, but then makes for very poor sleep!).

I changed what I ate, trying to avoid eating late and avoiding foods that ramp up metabolism. Nothing helped. Then Covid-19 (I missed the first 18 Covids…) hit.

That ended up not changing anything about my sleep either. One could have assumed that practically zero socialization might be relaxing, and I admit to not being any more anxious either (having been retired for eight years, not much changed in my routine as a result), but everything regarding sleep remained the same.

I’ll return to the sleep issue further down, when there is something new to report, but as long as I don’t mention it, assume that it was horrible throughout…

I was pleasantly surprised that for the first eight months of Covid, I basically (easily) maintained my weight. I assumed that being stuck in the house all day every day would lead to snacking and comfort food binges, but that wasn’t the case.

Then the holidays hit. Of course we didn’t go to wild parties, but we had our pods, and restaurants were much more open in VA than they were in NYC, so the eating ramped up. Once started, especially not going to the gym (and not exercising at home either!), the weight started to pile on.

Over the course of 2021, I gained at least 20 pounds. In the first quarter of 2022 I put on another 10+ pounds. I was back at 231 pounds and disgusted with myself.

After reading an interesting article about Intermittent Fasting (IF), I decided to try the 16:8 method, mostly trying to achieve 17:7 (if we weren’t eating out with friends). That meant trying not to eat anything after 7pm and nothing before noon the next day (I never skipped breakfast before then).

The first week or two were difficult (not terribly, but not easy). Then it became wonderful, not only because it was easy to skip breakfast, but also because everything about my morning changed for the better.

I used to be a rigid, timed eater. If we weren’t socializing, I ate at 7am, noon and 6pm, on the dot. That meant that things like morning Yoga, meditation, basically anything else, had to be worked around a meal, rather than the other way around.

I felt so free in the mornings, with the meal not being any part of my scheduling.

In the spirit of IF, I intended to eat the same amount of calories (roughly) in the allotted time that I would have otherwise, but as many people find out (and many studies point out), more often than not, I ended up consuming fewer calories.

I also started walking outside for exercise again. Coupled with the reduced caloric intake, the weight started to melt off of me. I started the IF in March of 2022. I ended it in August 2024 (that will be the subject of the next post). Beginning weight: 231. Ending weight: 195!

Sleep never got better (the rarest night when I slept for four hours), but I felt pretty good, and was rarely exhausted during the day (probably because I rested in bed the entire night rather than getting up like I wanted to…).

The next post will introduce a dramatic shift in my lifestyle and will comprise the months of Jul 2024 through October 2024 (a short, but extraordinarily impactful period in my life).

My last post in this series ended with me saying that I’d briefly cover the years 2003-2019 in the next post (which is this one).

Having been kicked off of Atkins, there was a positive and negative consequence. On the positive side, eating bread (and all things wheat) again was a joy. On the negative side, maintaining my weight was once again a struggle.

I yoyo’ed up and down, never ballooning fully, but gaining way more weight than I had hoped or expected. Eventually, each time, I’d knuckle down and lose the weight again (or at least most of it, most of the time). We are talking about 16 years here, so there was lots of time for the never-ending roller coaster ride.

In 2015, we moved from NY to VA. Nothing was going to change for me in terms of eating or exercising as a result, except that it did. Our goddaughter had just given birth to her second child and she was on maternity leave.

She knew that I had taken private yoga lessons in NYC and suggested that I join the gym that she was a member of and take some yoga classes with her. I was mortified at the thought of doing yoga with other people around (other than my personal teacher back in NYC), but I can’t say no to my goddaughter (or rather, I rarely want to!).

So, I joined the top gym in our area (the first time I’d ever joined a gym). In NY, I had been doing traditional yoga (some form of Hatha Yoga). Even though I had been doing it for a while, I was barely a beginner, and many poses were still very difficult for me.

The first time my goddaughter called to suggest a class, she said that there was a class called Yin Yoga. She had never done it before, but the description simply said Slow Yoga, which certainly sounded good to both of us (slow for me so that I wouldn’t have to keep up with the fast transitions in many classes, and slow for her, given that she was still recovering from childbirth!).

It turns out that neither of us had a clue what Yin Yoga (simply Yin from now on) was all about. Sure, the transitions are slow. That’s because each pose is held for three to five minutes. That can be challenging even for simple poses, but can be excruciating for more difficult poses.

That first class was both murder and exhilarating. It turns out that our teacher was amazing, and always gave alternatives to every pose (in particular the difficult ones). I’ll give one example.

Pigeon Pose done fully (by someone who can do it) is one of the loveliest poses in Yin. A first attempt at this pose is highly unlikely to be fully achievable (even for a few seconds, let alone for three minutes!).

Our teacher suggested that a good modification for those not able to do the full pose was to use yoga blocks to lift up the torso. She showed three different positions for the blocks to alter the height of the torso (taking pressure off of the knee and back). I needed the highest elevation to do the pose, but it worked (and was still painful!).

I enjoyed it so much that I continued going to her classes twice a week, often without my goddaughter attending. I also started going to a more traditional Hatha class early in the morning a few times a week that was labeled Yoga for Beginners (and thankfully, it was taught by a wonderful teacher as well).

Backing up a bit… On the day that I took a tour of the gym (before signing up), the salesperson told me that a new membership came with three free trainer sessions. That was another thing I thought I’d never do in my life. But, when I formally joined, I availed myself of those sessions.

While I didn’t continue with paid lessons once the free ones were done, I thoroughly enjoyed those lessons and continued going to the gym 4+ days a week and separate from the yoga classes, did a bunch of machines and free weights that the trainer taught me how to use.

So, out of the clear blue, I became a gym rat. That made handling the weight fluctuations a little easier, and I generally felt healthier than I had in decades.

This continued all the way until Covid hit. My last day in the gym was March 5th, 2020 (oops, I said this post would go through 2019, so that should have had a little spoiler alert next to it).

I was still going to Yin classes (with the same teacher!) twice a week, and was able to do the full Pigeon Pose (no blocks) and hold it for 5+ minutes, without any trouble.

The next post will cover the years from 2019 to 2022.