I feel slightly improved since my post of six days ago, but I have yet to attempt something like a simple walk around the block (to refresh, I spent just over 11 days ─ (October 18 - 28) in the Surrey Memorial being treated for severe "COVID pneumonia", as it was diagnosed to me after admittance.
However, I am pathetically scrawny and weak. Before I took sick in the fairly early part of October (yes, I delayed going to the hospital until my life was in jeopardy), I had quite nicely-muscled upper arms. Well, no more.
Now I have skinny arms with sagging and heavily-creased skin ─ the longitudinal striations are what one would see in the advanced elderly. It looks as if practically all of my collagen has been lost.
Back in the Summer, I had managed to drop my weight ─ I am about five feet and 10.75 inches in height (or 179.705 centimetres) ─ down to around 177 pounds and was doing well at maintaining that level.
Note that I had my 72nd birthday in October. And for most of my adult life, I have weighed in the lower half of the 180s (pounds). There have been times when I did dip down into the upper half of the 170s (once at the age of 31 I may have achieved 174 pounds); and often enough I have been in the upper half of the 180s, and even into the lower half of the 190s.
Well, three days ago I thought to weigh myself on an empty stomach.
Initially, I could not interpret what the bathroom scale was displaying until it finally dawned on me that the reason was because it was registering lower than anything I ever imagined. The reading on the mechanical scale turned out to be approximately 161 pounds.
No wonder my arms look like they've been dehydrated!
The last time I weighed this little was likely when I was around 16 years old and thus still in high school.
How am I ever going to regain the lost muscle mass / bulk at my age?
It is not that I am just weak. I also have cripplingly reduced lung capacity. It feels as if I only have half of the breathing lung range that I did when I was healthier.
Remember, a doctor at the hospital said that my lungs were "scarred".
I no longer have a robust sneeze ─ I sneeze like a wimp. When I stand after sitting for any length of time, I have to consciously breathe rapidly as fully as is comfortable to do to stave off dizziness.
I have been trying to perform a little exercise, beginning about eight days ago when I tried a full-range push-up on the carpeted living room floor. I could only achieve one. The strain to push myself back up after just brushing the carpet with my thighs, chest, and chin made me consider that it was as if I were on some far more dense planet where my body weight was insanely increased.
The day thereafter, I managed two push-ups; then three on the day after that. And now for three or four further consecutive days, I find myself stuck at four push-ups.
Even 50 calf-raises have me breathing hard, and even coughing a little from the strain.
The day I weighed myself (three days ago), I happened to be home alone. So I attempted 50 free-style partial squats.
The end result was frightening. I could not draw in enough air. I was downstairs, and frantically came upstairs almost choking while noisily wheezing in as much oxygen as I was able in as rapid a process as was possible for me.
I was expressing so much noise while doing this that anyone here would have easily believed that I was suffering severe emphysema. I actually wondered if I might pass out ─ I seemed not to be getting relief, and I was feeling some panic.
But I gradually did settle down where I had come to be seated at the edge of my bed.
The scare now has me afraid to challenge myself physically, and I have no idea how long it is going to take me to have my lungs ever come near to feeling normalized. (And there subsequently has come the realization that I might have been courting the threat of a heart-attack.) Maybe at my age, my lungs will not ever noramlize. Sure, I will improve over the next few months, but there is never going to be a return to normal.
So how to build muscle when I am this damned feeble? I cannot even consider trying to lift anything heavy. I cannot do curls, for example, with anything that would require me to begin to breathe intensely.
The following is from WebMD.com here:
How Many People With COVID-19 Will Get Pneumonia?
About 15% of COVID-19 cases are severe. That means they may need to be treated with oxygen in a hospital. About 5% of people have critical infections and need a ventilator.
People who get pneumonia may also have a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). It’s a disease that comes on quickly and causes breathing problems.
The new coronavirus causes severe inflammation in your lungs. It damages the cells and tissue that line the air sacs in your lungs. These sacs are where the oxygen you breathe is processed and delivered to your blood. The damage causes tissue to break off and clog your lungs. The walls of the sacs can thicken, making it very hard for you to breathe.
When I was being admitted to the hospital, I had to explicitly declare that I was refusing ever to have to be put on a ventilator or to be intubated.
I expect that my lower lungs are likely still laden with fluid, pus, old blood, mucous, and even dead lung tissue. But how long it will take before I start to hack up this matter in any worthwhile amounts is not anything I know. As yet, I do not seem able to resurrect this material ─ coughing doesn't seem to reach that depth.
I feel scant motivation to blog, so I am going to bring this post to a close here in the latter afternoon. I will fix myself a mug of hot coffee, and watch some T.V. while biding time until my younger brother ultimately returns home from where he left this afternoon to do some drinking at the home of his girlfriend Bev.
I am certain that he has been enjoying my return from the hospital because each evening I sit up with him and operate our Android TV Box, a device that is a mystery to him. Consequently, he now has an evening T.V. buddy! Prior to me taking sick, I would go to bed mid-evening and then rise in the wee a.m. to sit up most of the night working on one thing or another here at my computer, but I no longer feel like engaging any of that work.
Ahh! My wife just got home ─ I must definitely take my leave.
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