Surgery was successful.  I have some pretty cool new scars and I'm 32 days into recovery.  I'll try to remember events as they unfolded, but there's a 10 day stretch where I'm a little blank.

Went in on December 21st.  Surgery went well.  I don't remember much until the next day when the nurse came in and said, "Look who's here?"  Meanwhile, I'm hooked up to 6 IV's - 2 in my neck, 1 in each hand and 1 in each forearm.  To say I was drugged up is an understatement.  I had a Dilaudid (sp?) drip and a morphine button and I was in a tremendous amount of pain all the time.

Anyway, the room was dark, shades drawn, lights out and I didn't have my eyes in so I couldn't see anything.  In the dark I hear Wendler make fun of what I was wearing.

Jim spent 2 days with me at the hospital.  I was quickly getting addicted to opiates and we watched football, slept, talked, laughed and harassed the nurses, so I'm told.

On the 23rd Jim left and I got a call from my cousin, who happens to be a cardiac anesthesiologist.  No recollection of the call, but it led to the doctor on call coming into my room and saying, "You're off to surgery."

Turns out, my cousin realized I was having congestive heart failure from fluid on my lungs and heart.  YAY!  Emergency surgery on Christmas Eve.  No clue how Christmas Day was.  My sister showed up from Arkansas, as planned, on the 26th and I was a wreck.  Added to the 4 machines and 6 IV's I was hooked up to I now had 4 drainage tubes (3 in my stomach and 1 in my lung.  Awesome!

No idea which day it was, but the time came to pull the tubes.  The poor doctor doing it told me it wouldn't be that bad and it was a lie!  At this point I had the drip, the button and 2 Percocets 4 times a day, so I wasn't lucid.

When he pulled that first tube out I was lucid.  In fact, I distinctly remember threatening him, his wife and his children because he lied to me and said it wouldn't hurt that much.  In the midst of my threats a nurse was rubbing my head and whispering in my ear that everything was OK and to be calm.  This caused a very quick and painful turn of my head followed by, "It's not helping.  Please shut up!"

When the lung tube came out (the 4th and last tube) I started gurgling.  Very unsettling.

The biggest issue as I remember these 3 or so minutes is that because my sternum was cut in half and spread open for 7 hours of surgery.  It was subsequently pushed together and wire shut.  Four days post surgery it certainly wasn't healed.  It took about 3 weeks before I could take a deep, or even a real breath of air.  When the first tube came out I started breathing heavily, but couldn't take in enough air.  I'm guessing I started hyperventilating, which freaked me out and led t my completely honest threats.  Once I started gurgling I don't remember what happened after that.  I woke up and I was somewhere else.

My 5 day hospital stay turned into 10.  On day 8 they came in and said they were planning to release me and off the drip I came.  This means I got the IV in my neck out, which was nice.  Then came detox.  This is real.  Hot sweats, cold sweats, the shakes, hallucinations, fun for everyone involved.  Even on 2 Percocets 4 times a day I had detox.

Around the night before release I started feeling better and they planned to continue my release.  The final check ups were excellent and I was out by lunch on December 30th.

Side note: around 1am on the night of the 29th I woke up and decided I wanted to go for a walk.  I cleared it with my nurse and off we went.

They had a 600ft (I believe) loop around the entire ward and we started walking.  8.8 laps equaled a mile and I wanted to see where I was.  I was told to keep my activity to 20 minutes or less so I started the timer and we walked.  I banged out 6 laps in 21 minutes.  Not too bad!

When I got home I couldn't sit still.  I walked around my house for about an hour, just moving.  I couldn't do much more.  I worked up quite a disgusting sweat.  Between the meds, being dead for 7 hours in surgery and all the trauma, my body was reacting exactly as it should have been.  My sister looked at me and said, "You're gross.  Take a shower."  I looked at myself and realized I had sweat through my sweatpants and through my thermal shirt to the point where it looked like I had been working out in a sauna.

Over the next 2 days sleep didn't really happen.  On the 2nd my sister had to head back to Arkansas to start school.  Juliet Wendler showed up, put my in the truck and off to Ohio I went.

I spent a week at Jim's, mainly because he and Juliet insisted that I go there to recover.  The doctor was cool with it so it happened.

We spent many hours walking (3x a day for about a half mile at a clip), watching TV and movies and talking training.  A week later I was a completely different person.  Sleep was now at 3-4 hours at night.  The sweating got better, but was still bad and my ability to function had dramatically improved.

This continued when I got home.  Lots of walking and TV.  Honestly, the biggest issue I've dealt with since I've been home is the complete atrophy of my chest, shoulders, upper back and neck.  All totally normal.  And, every neck and shoulder injury I've suffered seemed to come back.  Without the musculature there to hold things in place I had neck/trap spasms, numbness in my left hand, now just my ring and pinky, crazy neck pain.  All of this led to low back pain.  That and the fact that I spent most of my time on the couch.  Again, all totally normal.

Two weeks ago, the day after I got home from Wendler's, I decided to see where my mile time was.  To this point all I did was walk with no cares of distance.  I banged out a mile on the track in 22m 45s.  Fast forward to this past Wednesday and I hammered out a 16m 17s mile.  Yeah, I'm super human.  I've been saying this for years and it was confirmed by my doctor the following day at my check up.

I am cleared to walk with a weighted vest and do rehab type movements for my neck and shoulders.  I can also do very light lifting for my legs.  Bodyweight squats, split squats... all on the table.  I can use 5-10lbs to do some DB Bench work and similar weights to do some rowing.  Like I said, basically all rehab stuff.  Started this Friday.  In 2 sessions my neck and shoulder pain has been greatly reduced.

At this point I'm putting together some circuits to do to get myself back on the wagon.  I'm down 28lbs!  I stepped on the scale the day of surgery at 276.  The Monday I got back from Wendler's I was 248.  My appetite has returned so I'm back to 255 or so.  Not trying to gain weight, but I'm eating when I'm hungry.

It's going to be a long road.  I have another 4 weeks before I'm cleared to try push-ups and pull-ups.  Dips will be more like 8 weeks.  At 12 weeks I'm fully cleared to return to normal activities.  So, for 2 months I'll be doing a lot of weighted vest walking, squats and rehab for my shoulders.

My only real restriction is that I can't "strain" under weight.  In speaking with my cousin that means no Valsalva anymore, which is fine.  I have to make sure the pressure doesn't get too high because of the artificial aorta.  But, he said squatting and deadlifting in the 300lb range is a non-issue, just no holding my breath.

As I move forward my training will be more geared towards conditioning (more so than it already has been).  But, I can still lift.

In this time I plan to get back to more posts about what we're doing with our athletes.  I'll update my progress, but it won't be very interesting so I'll stick with what's happening in the weight room.

Thanks to all who reached out in one way or another.  It's greatly appreciated.