Frustration with public swimming pools

I thought given California had a pretty good climate, and people like to swim that finding good pools would be easy. Not the case!

For a start, all the pools are 25m (or worse 25 yards, which is about 22m), and there really isn't many of them. I finally found a couple nearby, and they're all outdoors, so not very pleasant in winter and you have to wear lots of sunscreen in summer.

So I finally got time to go to the pool, with the plan to go a couple of times a week during the day. I looked up the address of the pool that looked the nicest, and noticed the public swimming times - 10am - 2pm, then 6-8pm. Bummer, it was about 9am and I had to be at the shelter by 11, so wouldn't get time. It's at a school, so I understand they have some restrictions.

I looked at the 2 public pools in Mountain View, and they are ALSO only open from about 10:30-1:30, then 6-8pm. I called up to see if those hours were just for lap swimming, or if they were the opening hours. They are the only hours they are open. The pool is used for nothing else, why the hell is it closed for most of the day???

I next tried the Stanford University Pool, and once again 10-2, 6-8pm.

So apparently anyone who wants to swim has to all go at the same time during that couple of hour window. Anyone who works can only go for those 2 hours in the evening. I generally have stuff on in the middle of the day.

Every pool in Australia that I've been to is a nice, usually indoor 50m and generally open from 6am - 9pm so everyone can go when it's convenient to them.

In Canberra (population 300,000 or so) within a 10 minute drive of where we lived, I had the option of 4 different good quality pools that were open all day (except AIS which was still open more them pools here despite catering to Olympic swimmer schedules).

I can't believe that with such a big population there is not one pool that is open the entire day. The water at the beach is way too cold to swim in, so there really isn't any options.

Rant over.

Officially off restrictions

I meant to post this on Thursday...

Thursday was exactly 3 months since surgery! That means I am officially off restrictions now - woohoo! I can't believe how fast it's gone. I feel perfectly fine now as well. Well, I have a couple of minor niggles. In my right chest muscle, there's a little spot which hurts when I sneeze. It's like a little pull. So I go "ahchoo OW" when I sneeze... I hope to start swimming soon, maybe that will help stretch it out and get some more movement in there.

The only other niggle is my scar itself, it's a bit tight feeling, it's still a little sore if I try to lie on my stomach - I can only do that for short periods at a time - and there's still a bit at the top that seems to pull on a nerve. They're only very minor things though, and generally I feel great.

I've been for a couple of jogs on the treadmill - jogged 1 mile (1.6km) each time. I'm still struggling a little to get back into study mode, but I'm catching up again, and hope to get ahead by the end of the mid semester break which starts next week. Once I'm caught up I'll get a better routine happening which includes regular exercise.

We're off to San Diego next week for 4 days. We're planning on going to the San Diego Zoo and Sea World which are both supposed to be very good, and the other 2 days we'll spend just relaxing at the beach and doing a bit of exploring.

Otherwise life is quiet - just the way we like it!

Scar update *warning, slightly gross*

When they told me that the hole in my chest would close up again and you wouldn't be able to tell anything happened, I didn't believe them. 3 weeks later, and you can hardly tell!

This is the day before the abscess burst open - it's red, swollen, and sore.



This is today:



It's still a little wider where the last part of the wound closed up, and more obvious than it was before it got infected. I do recall someone saying the scar would be more vascular while it was healing.

At the very top of the scar, I get some little shooting pains off into my neck when I turn or stretch my neck. I think something (a nerve??) is pulling there when I turn, which is getting annoying. I'm sure it'll get better with time.

Given the all clear!

I saw Dr Miller, my surgeon, today and he is very happy with my recovery - WOOHOO! He said I can start building up my exercise in both intensity and frequency and wants me to work on just pushing myself more over the next month, then as of April 1, I'm off restrictions!

I can start riding my bike, I'm going to start very slow jogging to see how it goes, and just try and do lots of stretching for my poor, tight muscles.

I'm so pleased to know that everything went well, and I really do feel so good now. I'm off all the drugs, I'm sleeping well, and while I get tired after a few days of walking, I know I just need to work to build this up, and rest when I need to.

The other good news is that the hole in my chest is almost completely healed! We stopped stuffing it with gauze on Friday night, and I didn't even need to cover it up today. It's looking really good, and the doctors were impressed with how fast it healed.

Interesting things from my talks with the team today:

Apparently my sternum is stronger now than it was before surgery. Something to do with when it knits together, the core is much stronger, so harder to break.

Because where my aneurysm was is in the most dangerous place for an aneurysm to be in case of rupture, and is now replaced by virtually indestructible Dacron, I'm out of the woods. If I have a dissection anywhere else on my aorta, it would be in a place where survival rates are much higher, even if it takes days to get checked out.

The "Stanford Modified Tyrone David Valve Sparing Aortic Replacement" or whatever its called is such that it recreates the natural blood flow of the aorta and sinuses through the valve, so theoretically everything should last as long as someone with no heart problems.

The condition of my aorta that was replaced was very fragile and thin, which I knew, but that's not "normal" of an aneurysm, which I did not know. Apparently it's not at all common for an aortic aneurysm to be in such a fragile state, and could certainly explain why, even though my dad got in for surgery very soon after his aneurysm dissected, that they weren't able to save him. I know that the aorta was tearing as they were trying to fix it, so if it was in the same condition as mine, there is probably no way they would have a chance in a fragile, already dissected aorta in such a vital position. Makes me even more relieved to have mine fixed.


Going in to talk to everyone is always more fun that seeing a surgical team is expected to be. Everyone is incredibly knowledgeable, friendly, professional, and gives us as much time as we need to ask all of our questions. We have never felt rushed - quite the opposite - we always spend more time talking than we thought we would! Everyone takes our concerns and questions seriously, and never seems to forget that while it's routine surgery for them, it's scary for us, which is something we really appreciate.

I know I've said this before, but we cannot speak highly enough of the Stanford team.

Netflix and the politics of it

Netflix is a DVD rental service over here. You choose your movies online, and they get delivered in the mail. Netflix has been fabulous - we watch so many more movies now, and the website gives recommendations based on what you've liked (you rate movies you'v watched), and movies similar to ones you've looked at.

Whenever we went to a movie store, we would forget what we wanted to see, or wouldn't want to spend the money on a movie that only looked kinda interesting, a TV series because it'd cost a fortune to watch the whole series, or an old movie that we just hadn't seen in ages.

So now our movie queue is about 120 long and includes seasons of shows we like or didn't get to see such as Desperate Housewives and Taken, old favourites like Goonies, Gremlins and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, even older classics like Gone with the Wind, silly ones like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Spaceballs and Waynes World, documentaries that look interesting, and then of course recent releases. The other thing we really like is that if something is out at the movies but we don't think we'll get time to see it, or if it looks interesting, but not something we feel the need to seeon the big screen, we put it straight into the queue, so when it's released on DVD we can watch it.

We've had a lot of fun finding movies to put in the queue! It also means politics of what is watched. For example - I was just put through Romper Stomper which is wayyyyy too violent for my tastes, so I got to bump up the Nanny Diaries (a cute looking rom-com). When we were watching Desperate Housewives and Taken after my surgery, we alternated between one of mine, and one of Andrews to keep it fair :-)

The quality of the service is so much better than the Blockbuster equivalent we trialled in Australia which constantly lost DVDs, sent us broken DVDs, or were such bad quality they were unplayable on our older DVD player. Australia better have something better set up by the time we get home!

Cautiously optimistic...

We haven't had a hospital visit this week, and at this rate, we shouldn't need to. I won't get too excited until the week is out though!

The wound is getting shorter, more narrow, and more shallow. It should be a couple more days before we can stop packing it. The top part is healing a little more slowly, so is the deepest part now (still looks fine), but the rest looks great.

We'll be keeping those fingers crossed!

No news is good news!

If I don't blog for a few days now, my fans get worried :-)

Everything has been fine this week. I went back in to get the wound checked out, and they were happy, but a little worried there was a suture irritating me. The next day, low and behold a long stitch started coming out right where they said I had one irritating me. The next day it fell out. They were talking surgical removal if it didn't come out on its own - so all is good!

Uni starts in a little over a week, and am doing 2 subjects, so getting a head start on that. Otherwise, life is pretty quiet.