PROGRESS: Day 2.4

This week has been going really well actually. I thought Friday was going to be my hard day, but I think sleep really made the difference. I chose not to ride on Friday just in case I was going to feel like crap and planned to ride today. I still haven’t experienced any nausea and the Pepcid has significantly helped with the heart burn from the steroids. It’s really strange, but I think that if I didn’t have as much awareness of my normal baseline it would be hard to actually tell there is a difference. It’s difficult to describe to people who do not look at their fitness and health data as frequently as we do (I lump Sean into this group as well) and have not established a baseline. The differences right now are kind of subtle; I can tell that I feel differently, but it’s not very extreme.

Health stats – A tangent

Last fall I bought a Garmin Fenix 6S and I have really loved it. I used to have an Apple watch and before that I used one of the Fitbits. The Fenix tracks a variety of health metrics including my heart rate, resting heart rate, sleep, pulse oxygenation and respiration. Then it has these propriety algorithm metrics like stress and body battery. Stress is calculated by measuring your heart rate variability and processing it through some algorithm to tell you a relative measure of your stress at any given moment. The body battery is a measure of the level of energy in your “tank” and it goes up or down based on your stress, rest, etc. The watch also tracks your performance metrics – things like your VO2 max, power thresholds, etc. Those metrics tend to be the things you use for more specific sports training.

This breast cancer journey has put me through physical, mental and emotional stresses over the last few months and I can see those stresses in my data. I was able to establish a baseline in most of my health and performance metrics prior to this experience and I can see how this experience has affected those metrics. The surgeries prevented me for weeks from doing most of the strenuous activity that I’m accustomed to doing, so I can see my VO2 max decrease and my resting heart rate slightly increase. I can also see the emotional stress of learning of my diagnosis and the nerves and worry I experienced in the days leading up to procedures or tests results by higher daily overall stress scores or difficulty getting full body battery “charge.” I can see the healing process in my metrics as well. My resting heart rate will be elevated in the days following procedures or treatments. My sleep won’t be as restful unless I received some sedative-type medications. And I wasn’t able to get back to my baseline before my chemotherapy started, so things just relatively feel more off to me.

I suppose my point in bringing all of this up is that in some ways being able to see all of these statistics and to see that they are off of my normal baseline is both helpful and sometimes unhelpful. On the unhelpful side, it makes me worried to see my numbers off, know that things aren’t “normal” with my body and fearing that I might not get back to my normal. But it also can be helpful to give me some indication of when I should take it easy or when I have energy available to expend. Also, I have to admit that I do see the recovery so it gives me reassurance that I will get back to my normal baseline. Ultimately, I appreciate my watch and the data it gathers. I can see each week during my chemotherapy how my metrics get worse around my treatment and slowly improve leading up to my next treatment.

Today’s goings-ons

Today my Garmin metrics were giving me the go-ahead, so Sean and I went on a nice bike ride. Actually, Sean did a long ride that was about 40 miles. I haven’t done a 40-mile ride in awhile and it was very humid, so I figured I shouldn’t push my luck with that and rode by myself. I did my normal 19-mile trail ride and it was busy! There were so many people out, which was somewhat surprising given how humid it was this morning. Most likely, people were out early because it was only going to get more humid and hotter as the day went on so more people probably tried to get out earlier.

The trail also brings about some interesting dynamics, because the trail was originally designed to be a bike trail but walkers, cyclists and runners all use it. There are even rollerbladers! My biggest pet peeve is the slow cyclists or the walkers and/or runners who think they can just walk or cycle slowly in a large group with multiple people abreast! They are obviously going slowly, which creates a bottleneck on the trail that can create a dicey situation. I want to pass them, but they make it challenging to pass them as I try to time it when no one is coming the opposite direction. But when they are a big group, they can be a long group to get past as well! They get irritated that I’m going “too fast” in their opinion (which, maybe sometimes I am), but I’m irritated that they are slowing me down! What about my PRs!? All joking aside about trying to achieve my fastest times, the harder part is that when it’s busy and there are a lot of these big groups, it also means that I end up basically doing intervals because I’m constantly losing all of my momentum and then have to pick back up. The result is that I work a lot harder and it makes it harder to do an easier ride. It was still a beautiful ride and I even saw a white heron and turtle!

Sean and I took Maddie to the pool today and she finally let us convince her to try swimming without her arm floaties on! She practiced diving for toys on the stairs so that the water was a bit shallower. It still allowed her to hold her breath as she went under the water and grabbed the little diving toys. Then she would jump off the stairs towards Sean who would catch her and then lightly push up on her belly as she doggy paddled back to the stairs! She did a really great job! We can tell when she sees slightly older kids swimming and diving that she wants to be able to do that herself so badly.

Today also marked the first day that I could actually get in the pool and submerge my various scars from my surgical procedures. Maddie asked me if I was going to get in the pool today and when I told her I was, she said “Mommy, show me your blue marker!” That’s how she refers to where I had my port surgery. When I showed it to her, she told me there was still marker there and that I couldn’t get into the pool until it was all gone. What a kiddo! I told her that it’s okay there was still marker left and I could get in the pool anyways. She seemed to be satisfied with that answer and was happy that I got in the pool with her today.

We ended the day with some delicious ribeye’s on the grill that Sean picked up from this cool, local butcher – The Ugly Pig. I made grilled baby Yukon gold potatoes with herbs, corn and roasted broccoli. It was all very delicious! Sean received one of those Thermoworks thermometers for Father’s Day this year which has helped him to cook steaks more accurately. Dinner was a pretty delicious end to a lovely day!