Progress worth noting

It’s true that, as I said in February, “recovery from accident, illness or other health related condition [is] a “journey”, and not a single event.” But that also means that sometimes, there are seemingly small things that happen that are important in their own right, but might get missed precisely because they’re small. So, here are some recent small things from my own journey.

I’ve weighed myself every Friday for many (many) years, giving me a pretty good record of the various fluctuations in my weight (something I talked about last year). This past Friday, I weighed myself and found I’d lost 1.2kg (2.64 US pounds) from the previous week. This was good news, but, typically, a little puzzling.

First, I tried to figure out how I managed that, mostly so maybe I could repeat whatever I did. I think it was physical work: On Monday, I went to our storage unit (now closed) and disassembled the shelves in it and loaded up my car with the shelves and the last few items we were keeping. It was hard, hot, physical stuff (not a complaint—just a fact). Wednesday, I reassembled the shelves in our garage and started filling them with boxes to sort later, and also rearranged other boxes. Also hard, hot, physical labour. Is that all it was?

Whatever the cause was, the fact I’d dropped 1.2kg in one week, while unusual (it's usually 500 grams or less—about a pound), it’s not unheard of. Neither is the fact my weight was stable for the two previous weeks, and the week before that I’d lost 700 grams (1.5 pounds) over the week before.

What all this means is that my weight loss has been slow, not necessarily steady or at a consistent rate, but also rarely going back up. The trend has been downward, over all.

So, in the time since my hospital adventure, I’ve lost 8.8kg (19.4 pounds). I last weighed what I do now in August of 2013 (technically, I was 100 grams lighter then, but that’s close enough for this comparison). That was before both my hospital adventure and the periodontal visit that started all of this. And this is all very good news.

I haven’t had a chance to see the doctor to find out what the results of my blood tests were, but they haven’t rung me up as they would have if there’d been anything alarming, so I’ll take that as positive, too. Eventually I’ll get the actual results, and I’ll know better whether the drugs, like the statin, are helping or not.

Speaking of drugs, I’ve had no trouble adjusting to the new dosage of blood pressure medicine, and so far my BP (when I remember to take it…) has been consistently lower than it had been, which was the whole point. This is also good news.

And, of course, that cold I had has also now gone away.

Finally, Monday I saw the periodontist for the first of two treatment sessions. It wasn’t painful, and went well, but in the days afterward my teeth on that side were more sensitive to temperature than usual. I have the next treatment a week from Monday.

And those small things all add up to a general continued path forward.

As I said in the post from last year I linked to above, “the whole point in my sharing my health journey is that it might be helpful to someone in a similar situation, or for someone who knows someone who is.” Maybe I can help others know they’re not alone in embarking on a journey of health recovery. That’s why I do it. That, and maybe it might encourage someone to get checked out to help save their life.

I’m well aware that many people couldn't possibly care less about the health journeys of me or anyone else, and that’s fine. But to some people, this sort of sharing may be very important. So, for me, noting even small progress is worth the effort.

So is the work needed for recovery, actually. I’m just one example of that.