I backburnered my walking routine as the mercury topped triple digits the last week of June. I just can’t submit Apollo, who is mostly black in color, to early evening walks, with the sun still beating down, making the asphalt and sidewalks very hot for his paws. I managed to squeeze in four walks this last week of June, but only three the week before. My best most consistent week came during the second week, where I only missed two days out of seven. The first week became almost a complete wash, since I spent three days at an astronomy convention, one day observing a lunar eclipse and another day observing Venus transit across the Sun.
Step Stats for June 2012
I didn’t take many photos this month with my cell phone while walking Apollo, probably because we walked very early or well after sunset most days, to avoid the heat and humidity as much as possible. I did capture a few flowers, sunsets, sunrises and quirky canine moments though and am sharing them below (click on the image to see the entire album):
June Walks with Apollo (click image for rest of album)
I need to find a better way to get exercise for both of us during the summer. My experience tells me July and August will not be any cooler than the last day of June. I guess it’s back to doing Wii Fit Plus in the great room for the next couple of months.
I donated whole blood today. I have been unable to donate for nearly two decades, due to chronic anemia. The last time I attempted (and failed to meet the minimum iron level) was either the immediately following the Andover tornado of April 1991 or the Oklahoma City Bombing in April 1995. Apparently, April just isn’t a good month for me to donate blood (or to dodge tornadoes and bombs).
I solved my anemia problem last fall and have felt much less tired these past few months. I thought it was time to try to donate again. I really disliked not being able to donate because I’m a universal donor and I am Rh negative (somewhat rare). When an e-mail came out at work a couple of weeks ago concerning a sponsored blood drive for the Community Blood Center of Greater Kansas City, I took the plunge and scheduled an appointment.
For the last two days, I made sure I drank plenty of water, something I routinely do anyway. I got a fairly good night’s sleep last night, albeit only six hours instead of seven. Summertime late sunsets encourage me to stay up past my bedtime most weekdays. Today, I ate a good breakfast, continued drinking water throughout the morning, and ate a light lunch immediately prior to my appointment, set for high noon on one of the hottest days of the year (thus far).
The library in the lobby of the building where I work provided the space for the blood drive. I took myself, and my photo ID, downstairs and arrived a few minutes early, knowing I’d have paperwork to fill out and questions to answer. I waited at the door for a few minutes, but got through the registration process fairly quickly. My draw number was twenty-five, so I settled in to wait, reading a book on my Nook and sipping on a bottle of water.
I barely got two pages read before my number was called. Now I had to pass the health screening. My blood pressure came in at 126/76, slightly elevated from my most recent readings. I put that down to nervousness. My pulse was 85 and my temperature at a cool 98.4 degrees. The final test involved a finger prick to gauge my hemoglobin levels. I held my breath as the small desktop testing apparatus analyzed my blood. After a few seconds, a reading of 13.5 appeared on its screen. I let out my breath and grinned. The minimum level required is eleven. My forearms were reviewed and approved for puncture.
Next, I was herded to a reclining bed/lounge chair and the real fun began. A blood bag with hose and needle attached and several vials for blood testing were prepped and deployed around my left arm and side. I was given a ball to squeeze so the health care professional could find my veins. She scrubbed my forearm for nearly a full minute and then stuck a rather large needle in my arm. She instructed me to squeeze the ball for five seconds then relax for five seconds. Apparently, in my enthusiasm to pump blood out of my veins, I squeezed the ball too hard. She came back and told me to ease up and that I only needed to squeeze as hard as I would if I were holding hands with a toddler. Whoops! I would have crushed their hand had I continued as I had been.
After a minute or two, I began to feel the affects of the blood leaving my body. I’ve felt this before so I wasn’t worried. But soon, I began to feel very light headed, very warm and my vision started to darken. Apparently, my complexion also drained of color, because a health care professional came over to me and asked how I was feeling. I said I felt a bit light headed. So they reclined me until my head was lower than my heart, raised my knees and placed cold damp paper towels on my forehead and neck. In just a few seconds, I felt completely normal again. I continued gently squeezing the ball while lying down and after about ten minutes I had filled my pint bag full of blood.
Even though I was feeling completely normal again, the blood drive personnel took very good care of me and made sure I didn’t faint when I sat up or stood up. I drank some apple juice and guiltily consumed two Oreo cookies. I received a donation sticker and a blood drive t-shirt, as well as cast my vote in the police department v. fire department ‘Battle for the Blood’ campaign. I also submitted an entry to win two tickets to the All-Star Game festivities. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for that one.
I returned to my desk on the ninth floor and whizzed through the rest of the afternoon, hardly missing the pint of blood I left in the lobby. I drank plenty of water, knowing the long drive home would be torture, driving west into the sun in 105 to 110 degree scorching heat. No, I won’t be walking Apollo this evening. I’ll be taking it easy with him on the couch, in the air conditioning, reading a book and sipping an iced tea.
I spent too much time standing around on a sidewalk, staring up at the sun, moon, Venus and stars last week, when I should have been striding along it. Apollo only got half the walks he usually gets in a week. I just couldn’t resist the allure of a solar eclipse, hunting for the tiniest sliver of a new moon and earthshine on a moon near Venus to be bothered with walking. My daughter stayed with us until Wednesday, returning to North Texas after visiting us for ten days after her college graduation.
My pedometer left me accusatory notes all week long, irritating me so much that I left it at home in “time out” one day. But stats don’t lie, and I only hit my goal of seven thousand steps per day one time last week:
Apollo finally got out of the house Wednesday evening, after Terry and I returned from dropping Rachelle off at the airport. We repeated our evening walks for the rest of the week. Not even the threat of thunderstorms could keep us cooped up in the house.
Click image for rest of album.
We welcomed the rain the thunderstorm brought. The grass desperately needed a drink. Thanks to the setting sun, a rainbow graced the sky east of our house.
Rain brings rainbows (click image for rest of album)
I anticipate the final week of May to include more walking for both us. Next week, I’ll be distracted on Monday and Tuesday by the moon and Venus again, but I hope to squeeze in walks with Apollo at the other end of the day from the astronomical observation points.
I hope everyone is having a fun and safe Memorial Day Weekend.
Rachelle and I spent Saturday morning participating in the Kansas City Heart Walk. Getting, there, proved to be more of a challenge than the actual physical exertion.
I woke up at my usual time (between five and five-thirty in the morning). I came downstairs to find Rachelle asleep in the hide-away bed in the living room. I gently shook her awake enough to ask her when she had gotten to sleep. She mumbled something about two (or maybe it was three) in the morning. I let her drift back to sleep.
I finished off the last bit of a box of cereal and started reading Insurgent by Veronica Roth, a recently released sequel to last year’s Divergent. The hardcover edition I checked out from the Kansas City Public Library is a strange size, being shorter than most of my other hardcovers, but still thick. The font is adequate in size, but almost double-spaced on the page, so I can breeze through quickly. I reached Chapter Eight and page 87 before putting down the book to prepare for the Heart Walk. Time to try waking up Rachelle again.
I shook her awake again at 7:15 a.m. and she asked for another fifteen minutes. I gave her another twenty or so and finally got her up and moving at about a quarter before eight. I needed to leave soon, as the warm-up for the walk began at a quarter to nine, and we still had to drive from Lansing to the Plaza, which takes thirty to forty minutes most days. We pulled out of the driveway at five minutes to eight.
Plaza Colonnade building (where I spend most of my weekdays)
We encountered no traffic of any kind on K-7 or I-70 or even US-71. As we approached the Plaza from the east, we began to see evidence of the walk as people (walking) and cars converged on Theis Park, the staging area for the Heart Walk. Since we were arriving so close to the start of the Walk, parking near the art gallery was non-existent and most of the walkers we saw were walking from the west and the parking garages at the Country Club Plaza. I opted to park in the parking garage at my building, which overlooks the intersection of Ward Parkway and Brookside Boulevard.
Rachelle and I walked a couple of blocks from the parking garage to Theis Park in about five minutes. We didn’t have time to stop at any of the sponsors’ tents. We wove our way through the crowds towards the north, where we could hear someone announcing the top five teams for fundraising for the event. I had no idea where my team was supposed to gather, and in fact only saw one other person from where I work briefly pass me in the crowd. We reached a spot just north of the Information Booth, and waited for a few minutes.
Waiting to Warm Up
Before the warm-up, a local artist led us in the National Anthem. Then, someone led us in a quick jazzersize warm-up, most of which I couldn’t follow because I could not see the stage well enough to determine what stretches and exercises I was supposed to be doing. I did the best I could under the circumstances.
KC Heart Walk 3 and 1 mile routes map
Soon after the warmup, the announcer told us to start walking, and we all did. Rachelle, and I, and several thousand other people took over the streets around the Nelson-Atkins art gallery. Rachelle and I had already planned on walking the longer route. By the time we walked up, around and down past the art gallery and along Brush Creek to where the 1 mile route diverged, thirty minutes had elapsed. That’s a slow pace! But with the press of so many people, even using the entire street, we couldn’t have increased our pace without resorting to rudeness.
The walkers committed to completing the longer three mile route stretched out along Brush Creek’s north side. I really dreaded this portion of the walk as Brush Creek can be odoriferous on good days. Since the sky stayed overcast and the wind gusted, neither Rachelle and I suffered too much.
We climbed out of Bush Creek on the west side of the Plaza, headed north to 47th street, and proceeded east. As we approached J.C. Nichols Parkway, I asked Rachelle if she wanted to continue to the finish line, which was just a couple of blocks beyond Main Street, or turn right and walk the two or three blocks to my building. She didn’t care, so I opted to head back to the building. Interestingly, while our first mile took thirty minutes, we completed the last two miles in a bit less than thirty minutes (a pace we’re both more used to walking).
We returned to the parking garage and left the Plaza behind around ten o’clock. We made one brief stop in the Legends area, to purchase tickets to Sunday’s Tbones baseball game. Our local minor league team just celebrated the opening of their tenth season in Kansas City last Thursday evening.
Rachelle and I had a good time walking with many other Kansas Citians in the Heart Walk. I want to thank all my sponsors for supporting me and the American Heart Association. Your donations fund critical cardiovascular disease research and education. I am also proud to work for an employer who takes an active part in the community’s health and wellness. I thank them for sponsoring not only a team, but most of the three mile route I walked Saturday morning.
Oh, and in case you’re wandering about my step statistics for this week, except for the two days I was either in Texas or driving back from Texas (after attending my daughter’s college graduation), I exceed my goal of 7,000 steps per day, especially on Saturday (which totaled 13,531 steps):
As I predicted, I reached my goal of seven thousand steps per day only one day (Tuesday) out of seven last week. I got close (within five hundred steps) on Thursday, the day I walked around the UNT campus with my daughter.
Steps Stats Second Week (May 2012)
I’m off to a better start this week, reaching almost ten thousand steps last night on a post-sunset walk with Apollo and my daughter around our Lansing neighborhood.
Monday, Apollo and I took our longest walk of the week, an hour long meander around the neighborhood at dusk. We saw a few flowers and a strange small dog with a pink mohawk who got very excited when Apollo walked by the front yard on the sidewalk. Pedometer: 10,790 steps
Click photo to see the rest of the album.
Tuesday, Apollo and I took a brisk forty-five minute walk around the area. Pedometer: 7,941 steps
Wenesday, I knew I wouldn’t get a chance to walk Apollo in the evening because Terry and I were meeting a couple for dinner and a concert after work. So I took half my lunch hour and walked around the park behind the American Century towers on the Plaza. Pedometer: 7,640 steps
Thursday morning, I took Apollo on a short pre-dawn walk for thirty minutes. My vanpool is leaving later now (at a quarter to seven), so getting up at my normal alarm time of five o’clock leaves me quite a bit of time to get some exercising in before getting ready for work. And, it allowed me to mow part of the lawn in the evening. Pedometer: 8,313 steps
Friday evening, Apollo and I walked for thirty minutes or so, and saw a pretty nice sunset and the almost full ‘super’ moon. Pedometer: 8,810 steps
Saturday overflowed with activities. I mowed most of the rest of the yard (push mowing for an hour). I cleaned house (more steps vacuuming and toting things up and down three flights of stairs). I ran errands (shopping). Apollo had a play date with a potential adoptee at the dog park (date didn’t go well, but I got more steps in). And I still took him for a walk that evening, for about a half an hour. Pedometer: 11,309 steps
The second week of ‘in training’ for my walking regimen to prepare for the KC Heart Walk seems to be a success. I’ve increased my activity. This week will be a challenge, though, to get enough walking done. We’ll see how well I do and how dedicated I remain to my goal (and to increasing that goal) of seven thousand steps each day. Especially since I didn’t get to walk at all on Sunday thanks to spring thunderstorms. And to show you I wasn’t the only lazy one in the house, here’s a photo of Apollo eating his supper … laying down.
All I have to do is look up my family tree to find plenty of incentives for fighting heart disease. None of that crossed my mind initially when I signed up at work to participate in the KC Heart Walk next month. I just thought it would be fun to walk with some coworkers.
But the more I thought about my inherited medical hodgepodge, the more concerned I became. I decided to take a closer look here at my previous couple of generations of blood related ancestors to get a better picture of why staying active and eating healthy is the best prescription for the rest of my life.
My father and mother, both born in 1942, are both still alive and kicking. In fact, you can’t keep my father out of the trees. His hobby lately is helping a neighbor cut down trees and split it into firewood and stack it for drying, storage and eventual sale. My mother started taking blood pressure medicine last year after a couple of scary trips to the E.R.
Grandma Juanita (1915-2005) and me at my high school graduation (May 1983)
My maternal grandmother died in June 2005, of congestive heart failure, but she still managed reached the age of ninety. Granted, she needed bypass surgery for a decade before she died. I spoke to my aunt Saturday and she also told me her mother was diagnosed with aortic valve stenosis before she died, which could have been treated with surgery (and a valve replacement) but Grandma didn’t want to have any surgery done.
I never met my maternal grandfather. He was born in 1888 and died in the mid 50s … of a heart attack.
I did meet my maternal great-grandmother (in the late 60s or early 70s). She was born in 1886 and died in February 1973 at the age of eighty-five. According to my aunt, my great-grandmother passed very quickly, her body basically shutting down (not specifically heart related).
My mom was one of six children, three boys and three girls. Her oldest sister passed away in 1987 of congestive heart failure at the age of fifty. I’ll turn fifty in just a couple of years.
Her younger sister received bypass surgery (quintuple) in the fall of 2001 and is still doing very well eleven years later. My Aunt Melody continues winning the battle against cardiovascular diseases, becoming a nearly daily regular at her local YMCA.
My aunt's wedding photo from the early 70s. Front row (left to right) my cousins Charles and Brandi, my brother Danny, my cousin Anne and me. Middle row (left to right) Aunt Hyla (1937-87), Grandma Juanita (1916-2005), my Mom. Back row (left to right) Uncle Harry and his wife, Rene, Groom Willard, Bride Melody (my aunt).
And that wraps up the maternal side of my genetic heritage. Moving on to my father’s family …
My paternal grandmother died two years ago in June, also of congestive heart failure, but she passed very quickly within a week or two. Up until a month before she died (at the age of eighty-eight), she had been living on her own in an apartment in an assisted living center. I believe arthritis proved her greatest bane for the last few years of her life, but she did also fight the usual suspects (heart disease).
Grandma Doris (1922-2010) and Grandpa Ralph (1920-1992) with my brother (the baby) and I in the last 60s
My paternal grandfather (not shown in the above photograph) passed away in March of 2003, but his death was not specifically heart related. He remained active in his community, as a Shriner and a musician, until the day he died.
Sitting on my Great-Grandfather Hodge's (1902-1975) knee for my first birthday. My cousin Toni peaking around behind me.
My great-grandfather, a much loved pastor in the small Kansas town where I grew up, died in the Summer of 1975, from a heart attack. According to my dad, Grandpa Hodge wouldn’t admit he was having heart trouble; he kept insisting it was the flu, because he had been an athlete and stayed active most of his life. Strangely, he died in the same hospital where I was born a decade earlier, in Winchester, Kansas. Grandpa Hodge loomed large in the first decade of my life. His passing devastated his church, the community and especially his family.
His first wife, Marie, passed away in 1949 of cancer. She immigrated (during or shortly after World War I) from the town of Stallupönen, in East Prussia.
***
I am encouraged that many of my female ancestors made it successfully into or through their eighth decade. If I can stay ahead of the genetics with healthy eating and living and regular exercise, I just might be around to annoy my great-grandkids over the next two or three decades.
Did you know that heart disease kills more people in America each year than any other disease? And that stroke is a leading cause of disability and the No. 4 killer?
Just 30 minutes a day of physical activity can lead to a stronger, healthier body. Take a small step toward better health by being physically active just 10 minutes 3 times per day.
Spring brings flowers, and showers, hot days and cold days, but also a better-than-average chance Apollo and I will get our walking completed before the sun sets most days. For the month of April, thus far, I’ve only missed three days, and two of those days were spent driving to and from North Texas for Easter.
I wear a pedometer everyday. I record my steps at SparkPeople.com, where I can run nifty reports and generate interactive graphs. Below is a snapshot of the graph of my step stats for April 2012 (up to Saturday the 28th):
My Steps Stats Graph (April 2012)
At the beginning of the year, I set a personal goal of walking 7,000 steps per day, 3,000 shy of the ideal recommend daily step value of 10,000. As you can see from the year-to-date weekly step total graph below, only in the last week of April have I finally reached my personal step goal.
Weekly Steps Total (Jan - Apr 2012)
I’m striving to exceed a minimum of 7,000 steps per day through the end of May. Then I will reset my goal accordingly (depending on what my average looks like).
As posted earlier this week, I’ve joined a team sponsored by my employer to walk next month in the KC Heart Walk. The event includes a one mile and a three mile route. I am ‘in training’ for the longer route, although according to the route map I created this morning via SparkPeople.com, my trek to the end of West Mary Street exceeds that length by just a bit (3.17 Miles / 5.1 Kilometers), and includes a nice incline up to the halfway turnaround point at DeSoto Road.
Now, a look in more detail at the last seven days of walking, six of them with Apollo.
Sunday, April 22nd, hour long walk with Apollo to Bittersweet Street on West Mary Street and back. Very windy and cloudy. Pedometer: 9,859 steps
Monday, April 23rd, short half-hour walk with Apollo around neighborhood. Pedometer: 6,328 steps
Tuesday, April 24th, short half-hour walk with Apollo to the Lansing Community Center and back. Pedometer: 7,538 steps
National Walk at Lunch Day
Wednesday, April 25th, I participated in the National Walk @ Lunch Day sponsored by my employer and my health insurance company. I joined several of my co-workers for a thirty minutes walk down the Trolley Track Trail along Brookside Boulevard in the South Plaza neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri. Because Wednesday also broke temperature records in the area (for heat), Apollo and I lazed around the house with Terry Wednesday, catching up on some shows recorded recently on the DVR. Pedometer: 6,881 steps
Thursday, April 26th, Apollo and I ventured around the Lansing Town Centre area for an hour. Pedometer: 8,834 steps
Friday, April 27th, Apollo and I looped around the high school, down the hill on East Mary Street to Hillbrook and back west through neighborhood along Hithergreen. Pedometer: 7,952 steps
Saturday morning, April 28th, Apollo and I set out to traverse all of West Mary Street, from one end to the other, a route of over three miles with some nice hills and sidewalks. Pedometer: 7,869 steps 11,585 steps *
To summarize the past week, here’s another graph produced thanks to the reports feature at SparkPeople.com:
My Steps Stats for the Last Week of April 2012
I plan to continue this pace, and increase it, over the next few weeks so that come Saturday, May 19th, I won’t be a straggler in my first ever Heart Walk.
* As of 4:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon, after shopping, my total steps reached a whopping 11,585. And the day’s not over yet!
