Birthday Plans

It is Michael's birthday today. A rather quiet one for him as he is having a "Boys Night Out" at a friend's house tomorrow night. It is a combined divorce-is-final and happy-birthday party. His young friend from work is celebrating the filing of the final documents for his divorce. (It was a horrible process for him. He discovered his wife had been having an affair with his best friend for several years.) Michael asked me to make another big pot of my beans with sauteed apples and kielbasa sausage. Even British Don is coming down from the city for this party.

The plan for today: I am going to the rehab class then picking him up from work. We need a smog on one car, will go together for that then swing by a fantastic Italian bakery for a slice a tiramisu to hold his birthday candles. He also has cards to open and phone calls to make.

But yesterday, it was medical test day. I did spirometry and DLCO pulmonary function tests and found that they were similar to the ones taken 18-months ago. Very similar. I am back up to 48% VLC and 48% DLCO. Those are two very important numbers. When they hit 40%, I will be sent to the Lung Transplant Clinic for evaluation for lung transplants.

Minutes after the PFTs, I had an echo on my heart to see if I have Pulmonary Hypertension. My tech was a young guy doing his clinicals but supervised by a very experienced woman. She directed him really well, it probably took longer than usual but I didn't care. I tried to help him relax and told them both that I was in no hurry. He remarked later that I was the nicest and easiest person he had ever worked on. I have a feeling he had not had a lot of experience yet! I told them how concerned I was about maybe having PH and that I have been working out almost everyday for over ten years. As they were taking the images, they kept making positive remarks. I said that I knew they couldn't tell me what they saw but if they could maybe wink if it looked good. No PH. I got the wink. Hopefully, when the images are more closely examined, they will find nothing. Fingers crossed.

The only negative was that I had to lay on my left side on a rather hard surface. After about an hour, my bad hip began to bother me. It was sore but by the time I got home and when I hauled my string bass out of the car for the orchestra last night, I felt something pull right where it had been sore. All evening, I had to stand and play and I could feel it getting more and more tight and painful.

After the rehearsal, I hauled it back to the car and hurt it again sliding the bass into the passenger seat area. When I got home, I did my hip stretching exercises, took an Alive and went to bed. I have no pain this morning but I am not going to push it at all.