Breathe Baby, Breathe!!

Here’s my baseline: As of October 2020, I only exhale 40% of what I inhale. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that this sucks pretty bad. My breath support for normal conversation is less than 50% of what it needs to be (according to my doctors etc.). For someone who makes a living speaking with people all day, this deficiency makes it really difficult to do what I need to do. It has started to prove itself to effect every aspect of my life…from what I say to what I do. I run out of steam pretty quickly these days.

I also believe that I will be healed. I have faith that with God by my side and with my hard work, I will get back to some semblance of the pre-clot Jen and I will have one heck of a testimony.

As part of my journey of literally “trying everything” to help my lungs function better, I have turned to a lot of non-traditional therapies. They don’t require me being drugged or an MD to administer, they are being done with a more wholistic approach.

I have sought out and hired very specific practitioners to help me do sort of a reset of my body’s systems – specifically my circulatory and my respiratory systems. It appears that some of my body’s functions have become less effective and others have compensated for them. My need is to get them ALL going again so that my body can run effectively.

With a trainer, I am waking some more dormant parts of my body back up through very specific exercises that are very difficult (for me) to do. My trainer has me perform exercises while in particular stances, using breathing techniques while doing them and with precise movements as I go throughout my workout. It astounds me how freakin hard these movements are for me. I am talking simple things – like squats done a certain way or a back exercise that I have performed a jillion ways before, but one tweak in how I put my arms makes the task nearly impossible for me to execute. My body had been compensating for a huge weakness and I have been using the wrong muscles in the past. Time to wake up, back muscles that help me breathe better!

After 2 weeks of this, I can already tell the difference. I feel stronger and more stable.

I have also visited a chiropractor. This is just not any chiro, this dude is a bit of a weirdo and I would not have it any other way. My first visit lasted almost 2.5 hours. He listened and he did all sorts of tests on me to see how my brain, muscles and skeletal system responded. He adjusted things that I didn’t even know could be adjusted. He put my shoulders back in place so that they had full movement and he adjusted my front and back ribs. By the time I was done, I was indeed breathing better.

And it hasn’t gone away. I still feel the effects as I feel like I can take a fuller breath and exhale more.

I also went to a speech therapist and she showed me how to properly use the expiatory exhaler device she had me buy. Each week, I have to tighten the resistance to make it harder to exhale. I am only on week #1, and my baseline for this little fun device is on the least resistance – cause that is all I can do now! Michael was able to exhale on the level with most resistance (that little stinker) and my goal is to get there too. Each week, I am to turn it 1/4 of a turn harder and breathe out 25 times. That may sound easy…but I assure you that it is not…for me anyway! LOL

So there you go…this is where the journey begins. You know my baseline, so sit back and relax and watch me get better!