A single pushup -- damn!

Hey Posse:

How’s it going?

Well if I needed a reminder that I am recovering versus being healed, I got it yesterday. It was a humbling experience.

After getting up from a needed nap I decided to try and hit the resistance bands and do a light workout. I hadn’t done any working out since early in this whole ordeal. That’s right, I called it an ordeal. I’m not as positive today as I usually am. In fact I am downright surly.

Anyway, I did a couple of sets of shoulder presses using the resistance bands; I used to scorn those things thinking they were faddish and not for real athletes. Like so many things lately I discovered I was wrong; it was way more workout than I anticipated.

Let me set the stage for you. Last winter I developed this lunchtime workout I used at the department of labor when it was too cold to go out and run. My office is on the third floor and the stairwell to the first floor has five or six landings. What I would do is walk briskly up and down the stairs from one landing to the next alternating between pushups, sit-ups, and leg lifts at each landing. I’d do this for about a half hour or forty-five minutes. Between the stairs and calisthenics it was a heck of a workout.

Well yesterday I got on my hands and knees on the green beat up carpet in my little computer office. The dogs of course thought it was quite a delight to have their dad on the floor with them. After their vigorous welcome I got myself into the front leaning rest (that’s what the pushup starting position is called).

I bent my once muscular arms and lowered myself to the floor. My stomach muscles screamed, my triceps ached, my chest quivered and then it happened – I knocked out a single pushup. There was no second – only a weakness that coursed through my body where strength once lived. I rolled over on my back with my chest heaving from the exertion of a single pushup and had it not been for the canine members of our gang, I probably would have cried. They surrounded me and licked my face with consoling thoughtfulness.

Man oh man! It was truly humbling – a single pushup. Fudge (I use fudge instead of another word that begins with f-u). It’s going to be a long, long walk to regain lean muscle mass and full motor function.

That leads me to another challenge. I look and sound much better than I actually am, but I’ll talk about that some other day. Suffice it to say that the chemo protocol I endured is one of the most aggressive and debilitating there is and my fairly optimistic attitude and stoicism tends to mask the seriousness of it all and the side effects – but I’m not a whiner. Although I’m actually whining, because to paraphrase Leslie Gore, “It’s my blog and I’ll whine if I want to.”

I guess that’s it now,

Surlily yours,

Bill