accomplished

I did it!! I finished riding 50 miles on my stromer yesterday at the Wildflower Pedalfest. Man was my legs tired after, but I completed the ride in one piece. I am so grateful for a body that is able to do such miraculous things. At the end of the ride, probably the last 20 miles. My body was saying, "okay I am done, you can stop now", but NO I kept on going. Our minds are amazing, we can tell ourselves we can, keep going even if our bodies are telling us to stop. If we can train our minds to keep us moving forward in life in whatever it is, we can tackle anything that comes in our way!
What a great way to celebrate 5 months with my new ticker!! Can't believe it has been 5 whole months. So very blessed that I have been able to stay healthy, germ free and to stay out of the hospital. Even though I miss my good ol' ICU nurses.

On Thursday guess what I had? Yup, another biopsy and echo. I think it was my 10th one. CRAZY BEANS!! My docs tell me after so many months they don't have to go through my jugular vein and that they can just take a blood sample. Real excited about that whenever that comes around, in the meantime, they still had to go in my neck and the results came back...GREAT! whoot! whot! All my blood work and echo looks good too. They lowered my dosage of Cellcept to 3 pills in the AM and 2 pills in the PM, but they didn't lower my chubby face medication unfortunately; not until my next clinic appointment. I told them that I haven't felt that wonderful when I go running, for example, I have the energy, but then when I start running I feel great for the first couple blocks and then the power goes out. Does that make sense? Then I told them after I have worked out I feel amazing and accomplished. Then they told me what days are you taking off to rest? I told them Sunday and they said, "We think maybe you are doing too much and you aren't giving your body enough rest time in between and you just started working again. "Okay, okay," I said. But honestly, I don't want to stop! If I don't go out every single day except my day of rest, then I feel like my day isn't complete. This whole thing is really hard for me to understand because now that I have my new ticker I can challenge it, I can do whatever I want!! Agh, no you can't Ashley...not just yet. It takes time to be able to get where you want to be. It has only been 5 months, yes, that's a while, but wait just 7 more.

Wow as I am writing this my understanding of what the docs told me on Thursday is starting to make sense. Dang, just had an "I can see clearly now the rain is gone" kinda moment. Time is the key word and patience. It is so silly how simple the answers are. Instead of running all the time I am going to walk on some days to let my body fully recover from workout to workout.

Last week I forgot to mention that I received another letter from my donor's father. It was so good to hear from him again. He told me where all his daughter's organs when too. What an incredible thing for her to do, she has impacted my life in a matter that no one else could top and she has touched others lives too. I am so very blessed each and every day to have such a healthy heart and to be doing activities that I thought I wouldn't be able to do again. If you aren't an organ donor, you should be! Because I wouldn't be here if my donor wasn't an organ donor.