1st day of rehab

today was the first day of outpatient clinic and pulmonary rehab. which means three days a week of being at the hospital by 8am for blood work, chest xray, rehab (ie. walking on a treadmill and lifting weights a newborn baby could throw across the room), and doctor's appointment (only once a week).

the first day of rehab is basically just to get some baseline numbers to work off of, so it wasnt too strenuous. and my baseline turned out to be a bit higher than they expected, which means im doing better than is typical 2 weeks out.

my goal is to get myself into running shape. this is kind of a big deal considering a) i am the slowest walker this side of 90 years of age; b) i am historically physically lazy; c) my peak, strenuous, tryinng my hardest walking speed is apparently 2.64 mph; and d) i have not run (sober) for anything in over 8 years. the last time i actually ran was in the spring of 2002. i was in galway. i was about 50 yards from a bus that i was about to miss -- a very infrequent bus, this being ireland -- and i ran to catch it, so that i would not miss the train to dublin. well, i caught the bus, spent the whole ride to the train station catching my breath, and got to the train 2 minutes before departure time. but -- remember, i'm in ireland -- the train proceeded to sit at the station for 45 minutes for no apparent reason. as it pulled out, so late that i couldve skipped the bus and just walked all the way to the station, i resolved never to run for any reason ever again.

so today i went to buy running shoes. (i tried to do this sunday, but ran into some availability problems.) it is a purchase i hae been looking forward to for many months. and i am now the owner of a shiny new pair of aasics. the first pair of running shoes ive bought since the summer of 1999. ill be breaking them in tomorrow at rehab day 2.

the trouble now will be to not overdue it and hurt myself. eventually, my competitive nature is gonna kick in. i imagine itll be like the opening scene of that episode of house when house's leg is tempoprarily healed. he runs 8 miles to work and arrives dripping in sweat. so im gonna try to avoid that. at least for now.

in other news, the beard is coming off. as soon as my razor and brush arrive from nj. off with the transplant beard, on with the rehab beard.

i wonder what it will be like when im no longer a lazy gimp....