Two weeks ago, someone came up to me in the line at the Round House Cafe, and said, “hey, I hear you had some major surgery.”
“Oh, no,” I said, “it wasn’t major surgery.”
“Oh,” she said, surprised, “what was it?”
“It was just open heart surgery,” I said.
“That is very major surgery,” she said, even more surprised.
“Really?,” I said, “I never thought of it as major.”
I understand now that I have been corrected that open heart surgery is major surgery, but I truly didn’t think of it that way, I was home in three days, blogging and writing in four. I just didn’t think that much about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t think it was a big deal, it is just that I sometimes lose perspective, any of my therapists will tell you that. Maria and I got on with life as fast as it was humanly possible to do, and neither of us are much into looking backwards.
**
It’s been just about four months to the day that I had my open heart surgery in Albany, N.Y., there is not a single day since then that I have not learned something about me, or about my body. I know how my heart works, what it needs, how it interacts with my body, I have learned even more about nutrition, movement, exercise, my blood, health insurance, medicine, and the impact surgery has had on the people around me. People come up to me every day with great concern – they seem vaguely surprised that I am stranding up right – they look me warmly in the eye, and say, “how are you?”
What is wrong with me? Why do I want to slug them?, I guess I don’t care to be defined by my surgery, it was long ago and I am well. Will I be assuring people that I am okay for the rest of my life? I don’t like health talk, and I don’t like old people talk, my heart surgery is not who I am or wish to be. I’ve heard many cancer survivors say that, now I understand what they mean.
Surgery like this changes you, it has changed me, and forever.
More than anything else, I am learning to understand limits. I have always had a problem with this, I always want more and want to do more, I have never quite grasped the profoundly spiritual less that quite often, less is more. I have worked very hard since my surgery, driven by the idea that I must do more and more all the time – more walks, longer distances, steeper hills. In cardiac rehab, I exceed the 50 minute work program every time, usually by half or more. Every time I get on the treadmill, I want to do more than I did the last time, tougher grades, faster speed, longer time.
I have recovered myself to exhaustion.
My nurse practitioner has always called me an over-acheiver, and now, my cardiac rehab nurses do as well. The nurses have taught me a lot about limits, about the importance of exercise, but also the importance of being rested. Twenty minutes is uslaly enough, I don’t have to do 30 or 40 to be healthy.
I am beginning to grasp this idea about limits. There are limits to what I can and should do, to how far I can and should go. I don’t need to go 35 minutes on the treadmill, 25 is fine. I don’t need 15 or 20 more minutes that my rehab calls for, I can take good care of my heart with less, and feel rested as well, not exhausted. I don’t need to keep pushing myself to do more and more every time. I need to find my comfort zone, body and mind and live there for awhile.
My body is different than it was before the surgery, I have recovered very well and continue to recover – open heart surgery takes up to a year for recovery, it does seem major – but it is now time to understand the limits of my life. I can do less and be healthy, take care of my heart, strengthen my legs. Two miles of walking in the morning is fine, I don’t have to do three or four. I can take one day a week off of heavy exercise, I don’t have to push myself seven days a week.
And I don’t need to push myself to the point of exhaustion, I know what my heart needs, I see the monitors and EKG in cardiac rehab, I have learned a lot about what my heart needs and what I need. This is a valuable lesson for recovery and for life as well, I have pushed myself to do more every day of my life, it is time to understand my limits and accept them, I suppose that is the lesson of almost every human being whose life is altered by surgery. Or life itself.