It’s been 7 months since I had my operation to put in my defibrillator, and truth be told, recovery was in my opinion not as fast as I would like. I’m not talking about being able to walk and do normal stuff in general, but rather, it took me about more than a month plus before I was able to raise my left arm above my shoulder. This was to prevent the leads from being accidentally moved out of position from the heart.
Even after a month, I found that I could still feel the leads tugging softly in the heart region. As the months passed, I began to feel less of it as my body got used to the leads. But, one of the things that bugged me for quite a while, was the fact that I still couldn’t really run. When I jogged, I felt a small little weight of the leads tugging at my heart. While it was not painful, it just felt out of the ordinary. So, I didn’t run for a while, although I continued with the occasional walks, which was perfectly fine.
Recently, after moving to our new place, I discovered that the neighborhood park was just in front of my home, and it was super convenient to head to the park for regular walks. I’ve been trying to walk 2 to 3 times a week for the last few weeks now. Two weeks ago, I attempted jogging to see if everything was ok. To my surprise, I didn’t feel a single thing! Nothing unusual at all! I was more than ecstatic to say the least! I didn’t run then though, as I wanted to take it really slow.
Its been 2 weeks since, and tonight I headed to the other nearby but larger Punggol Park. One round in the park is 1.2 km, so I only had to circle it twice to get my target distance. I wanted to run tonight, and was understandably nervous. I knew I would not run the full 2.4km, and was in fact trying to aim for just 1.2km. I walked 1.2km, and on my second round, I started a slow jog. It was really nice to finally run.
I made it to 700m before I started feeling a little flutter from the heart, which was where I immediately stopped running, and just continued walking. 
I’m really happy to have at least made the 700 metres. I’ll probably continue slowly building up my stamina and running only 500 to 700 metres until I’m fully fit to do more.
Through my condition, I’ve come to love God more, and had to walk through some heavy duty thought processes about life and death, and am happy to come to the conclusion that indeed, our lives are completely in the hands of the Almighty God.
Still, with this mindset, I am still amazed when I hear stories like the one I heard this morning from one of my church pastors who is a cancer patient. Chemotherapy is not an option for him, but he’s trusting that God is his absolute healer. To be able to come to such a conclusion is not easy, but he must have come to a deep understanding and conviction of who his father and provider is. Most importantly, he must have also come to the understanding and conviction that this world is not his home, but that he is just passing through. He has something far greater waiting for him beyond the blue….
Oh… another thing….. my legs hurt like mad…
