Monday 7 October 2013

7th October. My first full week.

Monday. I hate Mondays, by the way. Just so you know. Getting out of bed early (i.e. before midday) on a Monday morning takes quite a bit of effort for me. I usually prefer to spend my Monday mornings huddled in my bed, fast asleep and doing my best to ignore all the noise that happens on that particular morning; the rubbish sheds outside get emptied by the bin men which means lots of crashing around with big metal containers. Also the hallway in my building gets cleaned on a Monday morning, and the cleaner takes the opportunity to bash every bit of pipe and skirting that he can along the way and it's surprisingly loud and annoying. I call it the pipe  symphony and it's not pretty when you're trying to sleep.

I missed most of that this morning cos I was out of bed at 09:30. I had to get myself up, showered, dressed in my preferred comfy clothes, eat something sensible and warm up my crunchy joints ready for the swim before the carer arrives around 11.

I am happy to report that apart from some slight arm aches, I didn't feel any ill effects from Friday's first jaunt in the pool. This morning started off fine. The pool was quiet enough that I was able to start swimming on my back straight away, though I felt slightly flustered and not really ready for it. I think in future it might be an idea to do some swimming on my front a bit first to get myself going. Then the pool started to get busy. I like to swim near the wall so that if I get in any bother I can just grab hold of the wall and have a rest. This got a bit difficult to do as the pool filled up with other folk. I was thinking of calling it quits cos it was getting hard to swim more than a few strokes without having to stop to avoid other swimmers, but my carer (sat on the side with my walker, waiting for me) said I'd only been in for 15 minutes. Bugger, can't quit that soon. Thankfully a little while later the pool was sectioned off for an aqua aerobics class and lots of swimmers left so I had 15 minutes of swimming on my back with no one around before I decided I'd had enough. It's hard to count how far I'm swimming when I'm often just doing bits of a length, but I think I managed about 200 metres.  I worked my arms quite hard and my shoulders are complaining a bit now so we'll see how they are tomorrow. I'm hoping to swim Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and rest on the weekends. As long as I'm well enough and my carer's available (she helps me change) then I'm going to do my best to keep to that schedule.  So far I have been having a rest in bed after lunch with the electric blanket on high and that seems to help soothe most of my aches and stiffness. So, I'll see if I hurt tomorrow and get ready to start again on Wednesday.

1 comment:

  1. Fantastic start! Keep up the good work and before you know it going swimming will just become routine and you will miss it if you don't get to go. Don't worry about how far you are swimming just yet...just keep going as you have done for a certain period of time and before you know it you will be at your 1.5km goal! xx

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