It appears that I have gained back about 10 kg of weight from the low point after transplant surgery. However, I am still at around the same weight I was a year ago. The difference is that I was on dialysis, and had lots of excess fluid. IIRC, I had edema in both my lower legs and ankles, and even fluid in my chest cavity. I wanted to try and stay at around 80 kg, but due to the weird leg pain in my right hip joint, I have not been walking that much. Due to increased skin cancer risk from the anti-rejection medications, I have been walking on the treadmill in my garage. However, since the temperature in the garage stays at 80°F until late in the evening, I have been waiting until after 11:00 pm, and most nights I am asleep by then. I think the solution is to try and get on treadmill in the morning since I am usually up by 6:00 am anyway.

The weather was pretty weird today. Temperatures have been pretty cold these past few days but it was really hot today. The high was 88°F and my dad almost turned on the air conditioning. I was going to take a walk but waited until 7:30pm when it was a bit cooler.

I tried to walk a bit faster today and ended up walking ~1.5 miles with a pace of 18’30”. The Apple Fitness app finally gave me credit on the green exercise ring, but only 15 minutes even though I walked for about 27 minutes. I am not exactly sure what counts as a “brisk” walk.

One of the goals I set for myself post-heart surgery was to run a 5K race in 2020. Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic hit and shut everything down. I also had some heart issues with a-fib and excess fluids in my chest. Now that I am feeling better post-transplant, I want to try for the same goal again. I downloaded the C25K app on my iPhone back then but deleted it mid-last year. I will download it again and try to follow the workouts. Gotta start somewhere.

I am not sure where the idea came from, but I decided to try and ride a bike outside today instead of walking. I have two bicycles: a 2003 Giant NRS3 mountain bike, and a 2015 Trek 7.4 fitness (hybrid) bike. I believe I purchased the mountain bike for about $1,200 and the hybrid bike for $750. I had another hybrid bike that I bought in high school but gave it to someone at church a long time ago.

I bought the mountain bike while I was still married, and would go riding with some church people. The group rode pretty often and had much more expensive equipment than my Giant. We would usually ride the Fullerton Loop, and I would always be the last to finish. It was fun in the summer, but we also rode in the winter when it was already dark. I had to buy super bright halogen lights to see where I was going.

After moving to Orange and having my sister move back to SoCal from Oregon, I wanted to ride some of the paved bike paths in Irvine. The mountain bike was fine, but it was super heavy. I also did not want a expensive road bike, so I bought the Trek. It has an upright frame, but has super skinny road tires.

I literally rode the bike only once after I purchased it. Having not ridden for a long time, I went on a long ride with my sister and niece. I was fine until I was not fine. I probably overexerted myself and my legs cramped. I think my sister rode home first, and came in her station wagon to pick me up. Totally embarrassing. Before I knew it, I started dialysis and did not feel like I have the energy to ride a bike anymore.

So today was the second time I rode my “new” bike from five or six years ago. It was both easier and harder than I imagined. I was a bit wobbly at first, but as the saying goes, I was riding fine after about five minutes. I learned how to ride a bike in elementary school so over 40 years ago. Since I could not find my bike helmet, I just rode in our neighborhood. It was pretty easy until I had to go up a slight hill, and it suddenly became difficult. In the end, I only rode for 17 minutes and covered ~2.5 miles. Next time, I am going to buy/find a bike helmet and see if I can ride a bit farther, even though my house is surrounded by hills.

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Looking on Amazon at bike helmets, it is pretty evident there are two groups of products. One group are the ubiquitous cheap Chinese products, some selling as low as $20, and having strange and awkward brand names. This is common for a lot of products. Each one would be virtually identical to several other products, but would have a “brand” name of seemingly random letters. The other group of bike helmets are $50+ and made by Giro; my “lost” helmet is also made by Giro. The dilemma is whether to save money and go with a cheaper helmet, or go with a brand name. For a bike helmet that could possible save my life or protect from brain damage if I fall/crash, I think I will spend the extra money. I am super leery of crappy Chinese products, and have been actively avoiding anything “Made in China” as much as possible. Apple really need to get their shit together and rethink their supply/manufacturing chain.

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Speaking of the China supply chain, I am not usually the liberal social justice warrior, but this China using slave labor to make stuff (in this case cotton) is disgusting.

After my first nap yesterday, my left foot was hurting abit so I decided to go out for a walk. I only walked for 0.33 miles but I thought I was going to die. I had to sit on the curb and rest twice. Ugh. Not sure what is going on. I felt like I did in December, right after heart surgery. Hopefully tatcwill improve. I can’t run out of breath every 20 steps.

I just walked for a bit on the treadmill. I’m still thinking about Wednesday when I ran out of breath walking in the parking lot at UCLA. It was a really weird feeling. So I eventually walked about 0.6 miles and ended at a speed of two miles per hour. I felt fine the entire time so the only difference has to be the surgical mask. For some reason, it’s very hard to get airflow through the mask so probably I was cutting off the oxygen from getting to my lungs and hence the shortness of breath.

Ever since the heart bypass surgery, I’ve been working on recovery. Part of that is attending cardiac rehab, but also walking a lot more on my own. Since we can’t go out anymore, I’ve been walking on the treadmill in my garage. I even walked a bit last night. It was only 15 minutes and 0.5 miles but I felt fine afterwards.

Today at UCLA, I parked in the underground garage and put on a blue surgical mask to walk to my appointment. I noticed that it was kind of hard to breath through the mask material. Not two minutes later, I was running out of breath and panting like I’ve run a marathon. I pull the mask down a bit and it was better but still felt like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. This happened to me once before when I was out walking but I was back to “normal” the next time. Anyway, this happened several times today: walking back to my car after cardiologist appointment, and walking from/to my car at work. I hope it was the mask cutting off air to my lungs and nothing more serious. Other options are some kind of effect from the arrhythmia yesterday, or more several symptoms of a COVID-19 infection.

Happy April Fool’s Day! Though I think most people are not in the mood for humor. If you told me what life is like today a year ago, I’d think it was a poor April Fool’s Day joke.

I walked some more on the treadmill just now. I walked 0.70 miles at 1.6 mph, which is a pace of ~37′. Still kinda slow but I didn’t get winded. The cardiac rehab center called me today and I mentioned that I was a bit short of breath when lying down. I also told them I was fine sitting up or standing and I had no fever; they didn’t seem concerned at all. I think having a fever is the main symptom so everyone checks for it.

I haven’t posted these in awhile. Here is one from last week.

Those were hard fought miles. I think I only went out 3-4 times to walk and each time was pretty difficult. I’m still a bit puzzled about my shortness of breath. My cough is really mild and not much different from the lingering cough I had post-heart surgery. Likewise, I’ve had problems breathing and sleeping for the past few months. It just seems a bit worse this week. Still no fever and no comments from dialysis nurses when they listen to my lungs. I’m not sure I can even get a COVID-19 test without more serious symptoms.

I went out for a quick walk, thinking it may help with the neuropathy pain. Nope. I started running out of breath just walking past a few houses. It’s the worst yet. I ended up walking once around our block and I can’t remember how I made it back home. It felt like imwas dreaming and falling asleep while walking. At the end of the very short walk, I was really breathing hard. I only walked 0.32 miles plus about 15 minutes of walking inside the house. Not good.

I took a Tylenol-Codeine pill when I got home. I also just soaked my feet in fairly hot water. Nothing had worked yet. I need to take a nap and have the pair wear off but my recent breathing problems while laying down is not helping.

The weather was really nice today so I went out for a quick walk. I walked 1.0 miles at a pace of 23’08”. Again, I didn’t feel like I was walking that fast, and I’m still running out of breath along the way. There were a few people on the park path walking but the park itself was full of people again. There were people on the basketball court and hanging out in groups. I don’t even know the latest quarantine directives for the City of Orange but I thought only walking by yourself was okay, and all the parks amenities were closed. I stayed away from everyone and just walked my mile and went home.

Holy crap! I’m totally out of breath from a short walk. It was like this on Monday too, though things were pretty normal last Wednesday. Now I’m worried about COVID-19 again since one of the symptoms is shortness of breath. Still no fever though.

I walked 1.05 miles at a pace of 23’59”. Since I was out of breath most of the time, I though I walked slow but 24 minute mile is kind of quick for post surgery me. I walked through the park path again and today, there was a lot more people. There were people shooting baskets, blatantly ignoring the sign that says the court is closed. On the baseball field, there were a lot of people playing. Each group was pretty well separated but still…

Here is the parking lot. It was full of cars.

The latest rainstorm appears to have ended so I went outside for a walk. The city closed all the park amenities but still encouraged people to go out and exercise, as long as they stay six feet away from everyone. I’m not sure how far and how fast I walked since the Fitbit tracker crapped out and didn’t record anything about the walk. I did notice that I got tired and winded rather quickly, probably only after a quarter mile. Not sure if it’s because I’ve been in bed a lot, or if my cold (hopefully) symptoms reduced my lung capacity temporarily. It did get better a around the half-mile point though. After the walk, I had to sit in the garage for a few minutes to catch my breath. Never had to do that before. Not good.

There were very few people out. Most were out walking their dogs. The parking lot at the park had lots of cars but it looked like people stayed inside their cars instead of going into the park. I did see signs on the basketball court and jungle gym saying those items were closed. There was also very little traffic on the roads for a Monday. I walked by an elementary school and it was closed.

Since I’ve been getting very little sleep at night, I’m taking naps whenever I can. After dialysis, I skipped lunch and took a three hour nap. My mom then decided to wake me and nagged my dad and I to go out for a walk. The weather app said it was 64 degrees out but it was a bit windy so it ended up feeling pretty cold. We walked the regular park route and didn’t see many people out.

I walked 0.98 miles at a pace of 23’52”. I think my dad was feeling cold too so he walked pretty fast. Typically he will ask if I want to slow down the pace but not today. My heart rate was pretty high during the walk as well, according to Fitbit. I did feel more tired than other walks. Not sure if it’s the lack of sleep, bad dialysis session, or not walking regularly enough.

I finally finished the third and last solo virtual trail in Fitbit. Pohono Trail is another hiking trail at Yosemite and it had 62,500 steps. This seems to be a fairly difficult trail covering ~13 miles one way and with 2,800 feet of elevation change. Embarrassingly, it took me 21 days to complete since I had stopped walking daily due to the recent surgery.

Post #300! Instead of walking, I’ve been spending all my time blogging. Just kidding.

It’s been a busy week. From getting two root canals done Monday to attending three cardiac rehab sessions, I haven’t had time to go walking. I though about going this afternoon after dialysis but I had to run an errand at Home Depot, then pick up some medication at the pharmacy. In addition, I felt exhausted after dialysis. I got more than five hours of sleep last night/this morning. It’s not a lot but about average for this week. Maybe the rehab exercises are more tiring than they appear.

It’s about 4:00 pm now. I think I’m going to try and nap before dinner to bring up today’s sleep hours.