Steps forward, steps backwards

[stephbg]

Last Friday I managed to get back in the pool for another session of hydrotherapy.

The previous effort had been two weeks prior, and had cost me dearly in a major fibro flare on top of—and not playing nicely with—my tummy troubles, so this time I exercised rather more caution than upper body structures. The physio's program was mostly leg work, so I dug that out and went through almost the entire program, only slacking off on the things I knew would inflame my shoulders. So it was 8 laps of this forward, 8 laps of that backwards, 10 reps of this each side, 15 reps of that each side. All very civilised and I felt good doing it.

As expected I was pretty wobbly coming out of the pool, and by the time I was home, rinsed, and dried I was certainly ready for a rest. On Saturday I felt really good, and the muscle definition in my legs was something to behold. Those muscles have always been worked hard by the fibro, but in disorganised flashes of electrical activity at inconvenient times. Sometimes my massage therapist would report with some bemusement that I had the hamstrings of a hard-working athlete. A bit of properly co-ordinated activity suddenly lined up all the independent little muscle fibres and lo, instant muscle tone and definition. So yay for exercise, good for mind and body. I was all ready to throw away my walking stick.

Sunday it hit me. Oh how it hit me. I could barely stagger, and sleep was my friend. Late afternoon we did go out though, and I ended up having quite a long lurching cane-assisted walk around Hillary's boat harbour. As usual we looked for fish and saw two new species! One quite large crab, and a few very plump looking fish I'd never seen before. It was very crowded (a mild sunny Summer Sunday afternoon? Who'd have thought?) but in a good people-watching way. When people-dodging skills were required I welcomed them as a chance to wake up a bit.

Today (Monday) it hit me even harder. I managed to scrape together enough spoons to shower and dress, and the cats and fish have been serviced. But lordy that is *all*. On Saturday I'd believed I'd have a good chance of getting back in the pool today, and maybe a second session later in the week. Oh how wrong I was, so I'll stick to my original goal of once per week, and remember (albeit with great reluctance) that I have CFS and fibro and that one of the key symptoms is failure to recover from exercise. Not just failure to recover, but *escalating* failure to recover. On the bright side, while my modified program has worn me out for a few days I haven't had a flare of nerve pain, so yay.

It's also possible I'm feeling flatter because there's some Weather about. Certainly my old injuries are giving me a hard time. And my ulcer is acting up. At least I know it's an ulcer. Had hoped I could tame it with the occasional QuickEze but it looks like bigger guns will be needed so I'm seeing my GP on Wednesday. On Thursday I lose Husband to South Australia for a week :-(

Comments

[mortonhall.livejournal.com]

the positive things from your post:

1) you had another go at the hydrotherapy
2) you were totally correct in your understanding of how you would react

and the most important one:
3) Fish! Any idea which species you saw? Do they have a guide book or something you can use to ID them?

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

I prefer to simply admire the fishies.

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

*loves* Glad you got to go back for more hydro, and glad you got some good days out of it even if there were bad ones following - hopefully it will even out over time to be more good than bad.