Gymage...Slow gymage, but GYMAGE!!

Howdy. Yesterday as promised I mixed things up a little bit and shuffled along to the gym with Dad (who was playing squash - he's quite good). The aim was to do my usualy walk plus a little extra as long as I could manage, and I'm pleased to say that I did!
I started with 30 minutes on the treadmill at 4-5 kmph, on a cross country profile, which was pretty much a simulation of what I've been doing everyday, then I did 10 minutes on a few of the weight machines. Nothing major, just some moderate weights and medium reps to get some tone and strength coming back.
After this I still felt pretty good so I went on the bike for 10 minutes. That was very hard actually... for some reason I was struggling with my breathing alot more than I do walking these days... maybe because you're leaning forward and squishing your lungs a bit? Don't know, but I perservered mostly because I was already getting looks for peddling so slowly and didn't want to look more of a loser. I recovered fairly fast though, and so decided to round it off with a final 10 minutes walking. So an hours exercise for me! Was shattered that evening, but in a good way.

I've found that the longer I'm able to keep it up and the more coughing I can get done early in the workout without tightening up, plus a decent cough right at the end of the workout, the better I seem to be throughout the rest of the day. I reckon this is for two reasons - firstly the most obvious, that I'm clearing stuff off my chest in larger quantities and from deeper down when I get really out of breath, plus it opens up little bits of my lung that stick together when I am shallow breathing (most of the time...) and gets more air in. Secondly, I can't help but feel that there is a non-measurable element that might come down to several factors - my body's physical perception of exertion, the way my muscles want to make use of oxygen ect that day, subtle changes in how well rested I am, and finally my psychological state.

It's all very well being able to state in amounts how your temperature is, what your lung functions are, oxygen saturations, weight, and amount of sputum you bring up daily, but actually the more normal these become, the more I'll have to accept that health and fitness as an entity aren't dependant on decimal points.
Being a sciencey person, I wish it were that easy, to be able to say that once my lung x-ray has cleared and my lung volumes are up that everything will be fixed. But actually it will be much more complicated than that in the long run. For instance my body's perception of exertion is one thing, but my mentail perception is another. How do I begin to know what's okay for me to feel like with increasing exercise? I mean, I'm not stupid, and I wouldn't go beyond real pain, faintness or irregular heartbeats. But at the same time, I'm not the average schmoe who's let themselves go a bit and for who extreme breathlessness after walking up the stairs would warrant a doctors visit... I already know exactly why this is happening to me, and now that I'm in recovery and know that I've lived through some pretty grim breathing difficulties, I have to put up with it for now. It's here and it's queer, but there's nothing I can do except get on with my 'pulmonary rehab' with the panting always there.
So what I'm trying to say is... with increasing ability to exert myself, I'm not entirely sure if it'll be the speed and effort level that go up with the panting and gasping still an issue, or if I should stay at the same effort until that subsides and I feel comfortable to move to the next level up. I suppose this is because in all honesty, I have no idea how long my breathing will be abnormal for. I mean I think it's a matter of months untill I see some major changes with my day to day breathing. And don't get me wrong, it's already miles better with not needing O2 ect. But to look at my chest x-ray two weeks ago... dissappointing to say the least. It looked as rubbish as when I was feeling my worst! Go figure. My Doctor says that quite often radiography is the last thing to improve, so this doesn't in any way mean that things aren't improving - evidently I'm way more healthy so we'll hang on to that for now.

I'm actually pretty optimistic about my infection levels too... I was so nervous that with the increased gunkiness, immune suppression from drugs, not being as active ect ect, I would pick up an infection pretty soon and be needing at least a course of orals if not IVs, but knock on wood, this hasn't been a real issue yet! And having been off IVs for 7 weeks this is quite good. I have got some infected looking stuff all the time, which due to the nature of CF is quite normal, but on days like today, where I cough up more and it tastes funny, I get slightly nervous. However as of monday I started my long term azithromycin (an oral antibiotic), which I was optomistic about as I think in the long term I do need some help to reduce the odds of infection just because I'm on steroids so can't fight it off as well. I also have colomycin, another antibiotic, which I make up from powder in vials and inhale with the nebuliser. This helps prevent pseudomonas growing in your lungs so hopefully I should be quite a germ free zone for a while!

Not much to report from today except I had a nice walk (!) for about 40 minutes. I tried to keep the pace up a bit too even though it was hard work at first with the coughing. However after this subsided and with a much clearer chest, I found the walk quite pleasant, and wasn't too breathless at all at the end. (Had a little 30 second jog too!)

Tomorrow I'll be spending a lovely day with my boyfriend Adam (he blogs too) who's also sporty and also trying to regain some fitness after a tough few months healthwise. So we'll have a walk together (I'm going to try and do some talking as we go as I need to start getting used to controlling my breathing better) and then chill, cook something ect ect. Should be loverly!

Right, enough ramblings for one day methinks, happy tatas xxx