Finished colonoscopy.  The procedure itself was a piece of cake.  They said I’d be sedated and wouldn’t remember the procedure.  I told them I was hard to sedate.  They didn’t believe me.  I watched the scope picture on the monitor and remembered it.  Said I would want to go to sleep afterwards, I don’t.  Hungry as hell as I haven’t been able to eat for two days prior and it’s our 37th anniversary so going out to dinner.

     Getting ready for colonoscopy, have consumed close to 1/2 gallon of laxative so far.  The results kicked in about two hours ago.  Frequent bathroom trips, doubled over with cramps, pissing out my butt..  I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun.

    The last time I came back from being really out of shape was when I was 35, did a treadmill test and they told me I had the heart and lungs of a 45 year old.  Got back into shape, did another test at 45 at which point they told me I had the heart and lungs of a 35 year old.

     In spite of that being 22 years ago, I still have some pretty good memories of the process and I remember smaller muscles like biceps, triceps, taking about two days to recover and larger muscles like quadriceps taking three or so.

     Yesterday, my third workout in 7 years, I really hit it with a pretty high intensity, came back with a soaked T-shirt, and every muscle on my frame ached.  And I really expected to be very sore today, but I’ve almost completely recovered overnight.

     I had expected, being much older, my recovery period would be longer, but the opposite is true.  One thing I’m doing differently these days is I take quite a few anti-oxidant supplements and also quite a few supplements for nerve regeneration such as alpha lipoic acid.  I wonder how much these things impact recovery time.

     In just three workouts I’ve already knocked my resting heart beat rate down ten beats per minute and the nerve pain is way down.

    I am pleased that my recovery period is so short.  I am hopeful that it will allow me to progress towards a healthy state faster than before.  I believe God is preparing me for something, not sure what quite yet.

     I have been in a lot of nerve pain, particularly at night, since treatment for my diabetes was started.  Both my general practitioner and neurologist seemed clueless about this but I read on a national institute of health website concerning diabetes neuropathy that this sometimes happens.  That when a patient starts treatment their symptoms initially get worse.  But eventually, when their blood sugar is brought under control and stabilizes, the symptoms abate.

     The nerve pain had become intense, to the point where I felt I was being doused with gasoline and set on fire.  And sometimes this would go all night.  There were nights when I only got half hours sleep because of the pain.  Gabapentin was prescribed but even at near maximum dosages it was at times ineffective or at least not sufficiently effective.

     I wanted to go back to exercising, I believed losing weight and putting on muscle mass would be the real answer to getting my blood sugar under control, pills were just a bandaid.  But the doctor wanted me to take a treadmill test to make sure my heart was up to it.  There were many factors to lead one to believe it wouldn’t be.  I had a total cholesterol to HDL ratio of 7.8:1, they consider anything above 3.5:1 a risk for heart disease.  I had triglycerides over 400.  I had diabetes with fasting glucose of 352mg/dL, about 3.5x what it would be, and I had seven years of sedentary lifestyle.

     I asked people for prayer on my behalf and a number of people did pray for me.

     On the 28th, I went in for my treadmill test.  I had no heart problems, EKG was clean from resting to full max heart rate.  No symptoms, no bad sounds, everything was good.

     I’ve gone in and done two workouts now.  I was expecting that over time as I got my weight down and muscle mass up, the diabetes and nerve pain would improve.  I was not expecting immediate relief but that is what I got!  The first night after my first workout was pain free, and again last night after my second workout, only very mild pain and most of that was muscle soreness not the nerve pain I had.

     For me this is a personal miracle because my suffering has been taken from me, and I am thankful to God, and to all of you who prayed.

     I am a great believer in intercessory prayer.  I’ve seen it work so many times in other peoples lives, and now in my own.  When Jesus was asked, of all the commandments, which are the greatest, he answered,  To love God with all your heart, mind, and spirit, and to love your neighbors as yourself.  When we pray for someone else and do so out of love for them, I think God is particularly inclined to honor those prayers because we are doing his will.

     So again I thank all of you for your prayers.  And if you know someone who is hurting pray for them out of love.  I am least worthy to receive God’s grace and yet I have so surely he will bless others even more.

     After my first workout in more than seven years, nerve pain was way down last night.  Best night I’ve had in many weeks.  My body obviously needed this.

     It felt kind of awkward being back in the gym yesterday.  The Ballinger 24 Hour Fitness has changed considerably over the last seven years, in some ways good, in some ways less so.

     A positive change is that they’ve got a lot more equipment.  However, it’s in the same floor space so where things used to be easy to navigate and organized in a logical manner that made it easy to find what you were looking for, now it’s very cramped and haphazard.

     It’s good that they can accommodate more people this way but also a bit uncomfortable, especially if there isn’t enough air flow.

     In the old days they used to provide much more personal assistance and tracking, body mass index measurements and so on, as just part of the basic membership.  But it also used to be expensive to join, several hundred dollars.  Now there is only one hour of personal training included, none of that tracking, and if you want personal training it runs $260 for five hours, kind of steep.

     To be able to just go in and use the equipment, its only $30/month now, a fee I can actually handle and well worth it.  Knocking this nerve pain down is easily worth way more than that.  I certainly spend way more than that on pharmaceuticals and I’m pretty sure this is way healthier.

     Having been cleared to exercise with no restrictions, today I went to the gym for my first workout in more than seven years.

     Focused on upper body today as last time I took Mei or a walk, she pulled this way and that and my back was sore for three days.  Determined to fix that, so worked on back, shoulders, arms, abdominal muscles, chest, tomorrow I will work lower body more.

     Nerve pain is there still, now I’ve got some muscle burn to go with it.  At least I can know that burn is one that is getting me to a better place.

     Peak pain has flared, come, and gone for the night.  Now at a manageable level, but I can not go to sleep.  Very wired even though I took 1200mg of gabapentin earlier which my neurologist was worried would sedate me.  It does not, hardly anything does except a heavy meal or a night with way too little sleep which if this continues, this night will be.

     I had hoped to go to the gym for my first workout in more than seven years but did not make it.  By the time clothes were washed my neuropathy had flared up to where I was on fire and beyond the ability to handle it.

     So far today I’ve eaten 2100MG of gabapentin which at the moment is not sufficient to suppress this nerve pain.  Today it started with strange stabbing pains to the right side of my belly, then they migrated to my left leg midway between foot and knee.  Now I’m burning all over.

     If I had ANY idea how much pain would be involved, I would not have ever allowed myself to get into this condition.

     But now at least I know my heart is good, in between the intense bouts of pain I will make it to the gym and begin working on this.  I have ample motivation.

     Emotionally this is really tugging me in two directions.  On the one hand, night after night of searing pain and agony, difficulty sleeping because of it, these things are depressing.

     On the other hand, God has brought me so far spiritually, and now he is pointing out my physical deficiencies and giving me a path to remedy those as well.  I believe God would not be working on my so much if he did not have something very worthwhile for me to do in my future.  So that aspect of it excites me.  I am not proud of my past but I am being given an opportunity to do something better with my remaining years.

     I did my heart stress test today and cardiologist said heart is in good shape.  No bad sounds, EKG was perfect at rest and at full tilt.  She said there was absolutely no reason I should have to restrict my exercise in any way.  So now I’ve got a path to recovery and am feeling much better about my situation knowing it is temporary.

     Still have a colonoscopy on May 6th, hopefully source of blood will be benign.  Given all the issues I’ve had with constipation since the boil issue, my gastroenterologist feels that it is likely just related to that.  But will find out next Friday.