There’s a farmers market in Palo Alto today. This farmer’s market is at California Avenue. My mom and I decided to go. We bought local grown strawberries, homemade chips, handmade linguine, and Mexican food.
I had to sit down in the farmer’s market because of my heart pounding. After my heart transplant, I’ve been experiencing a heavy thumping from my heart after physical activity. It physically tires me, and it makes me uncomfortable enough for me to not barely focus on anything else. Since my heart was pounding, I didn’t eat much of my Mexican food I bought.
I like to cook at the Ronald McDonald House. It’s a good way to get some activity into my day and meet/talk to new people. However, since I experience heart pounding cooking is difficult.
After transplant, I have a sensation of heart pounding. It’s when I can do as little as walking across a room and my heart starts pounding. I can feel it in my chest and I feel thumping in my ears. It’s not as bad as when I was in the hospital, but it still inhibits the amount of activity I do. That’s why I want to push my activity levels every day. If I do more activity, I raise my endurance levels. That’s why I walk on the treadmill everyday and cook often.
I’m planning to cook mushroom cups with Angela. I got the recipe online. Angela is my friend I made at the Ronald McDonald House. She’s at Stanford for treatment of her liver. She can only eat 20 grams of protein per day. 20 grams of protein is nothing. An egg has 6 grams of protein, so she can only eat under 4 eggs each day.
My mom took me to Safeway for ingredients of the mushroom cups. Mushroom cups are cooked mushrooms in a cream cheese mixture stuffed into filo cups. I bought mushrooms, heavy whipping cream, and filo cups. When I came back, I cooked the filling with Angela. We diced the mushrooms and cooked it with the whipping cream. After the mixture was thickened, we saran wrapped it and stored it in my room’s refrigerator overnight.
My Mom’s friend, Joanna, visited me at the Ronald McDonald House today. Joanna was my piano teacher, and I’m friends with her son, Andrew. We went to eat at Calafia Cafe & Market A Go-Go. We went there because I saw that restaurant on a TV show called Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.
When Joanna and Andrew left, I made mushroom cups with Angela. We followed a recipe online. Angela is my friend at the Ronald McDonald House (see June 15, 2018 for her condition). I already made the filling for the mushroom cups yesterday, so I brought it out from our community refrigerator. I put the premade filling into the filo cups and baked it in the oven.
Angela’s family had a BBQ today. I joined in their barbeque and they liked my mushroom cups. I met Angela’s sister and her English teacher. I had a great time with them!
After the barbecue my Dad visited me at the Ronald McDonald House. Dad brought Julia, my sister, too. This is the first time after transplant that I’ve seen Julia. The reason is because UCLA doesn’t start summer break until June 10.
We went across the street to the Stanford Mall to eat dinner. We ate at Tender Greens, a restaurant that serves salad. I couldn’t eat so much since I had to walk to the Stanford Mall. Although it’s across the street from the Ronald McDonald House, that distance is enough to make my heart start pounding. When I do activity, my heart starts pounding. I can feel the thumping in my chest and ears. When heart pounding happens, I’m usually too uncomfortable or nauseous to eat.
My Mom and I walked to the Stanford theater today. The Stanford theater is a theater in Downtown Palo Alto that plays classic movies. Downtown Palo Alto isn’t far from the Ronald McDonald House.
Even though Downtown Palo Alto isn’t far from the Ronald McDonald House, it’s still a tiring walk for me. I have a sensation of heart pounding when I do any physical activity. Although it’s not as bad as it was in the hospital, it still inhibits me from doing a lot. I wore my pixar hat I got from the Ronald McDonald House (see June 21, 2018) to protect myself from the sun. After transplant, I’m also more vulnerable to skin cancer.
The Stanford theater has showtimes on their ticket booth and online. If you’re staying at the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford, I recommend you check them out. We watched the Royal Wedding at 7:30 PM. The Royal Wedding was released in 1951, so it’s pretty old.
Today there’s a Stanford run for kids. The Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital is hosting a 5k/10k run, and the money will go to the hospital.
I didn’t participate. My heart pounding is still very strong. In case you didn’t know, I have a heart pounding sensation after transplant when I do minor physical activity and my heart starts to heavily beat. I could walk as little as 100 ft and have to sit down. Also, I don’t have much endurance. After my transplant, my heart has to readjust to my body, and it hasn’t yet. I try to push my endurance often, but doing a 5k is too much.
My Mom did. She told me that she met the doctor that took care of me in the PCU (aka a doctor I can remember).
I had a swim lesson with my swim coach today. She introduced me to a swimming in intervals. She told me to swim 2 laps (or one lap, whichever you consider 50 meters) and rest for 40 seconds, then repeat. Usually with advanced swimmers it’s a lot shorter, but for my fitness it’s hard. I did this for 20 laps (10 laps) or 500 yards.
After just one lap I started to hear my heart pounding and my breathing got harder. I don’t know if that’s normal for other beginning swimmers or if it’s unique toward my heart condition, but I know I can handle it with more practice.
I had a great time swimming today. Before transplant I couldn’t swim as much as I can today, and I’m so grateful for this opportunity to exercise and play sports.
Today I had another personal training lesson, and boy, we worked hard! It was a lot more than last week.
I didn’t do anything to practice since there wasn’t a lot to practice, so I did kind of horribly today.
Compared to January 26, 2019, we worked a lot harder. First we started with lunges, which killed me. Then I did jump squats, which was super hard with my already weak knees.
I swear my heartbeat raised to 150. My heart was working so hard that I could hear it, similar to the heart pounding sensation I experienced right after transplant.
My personal trainer taught me an exercise to do with a ball, some more exercises on the TRX machine, and how to use my core. My core is really bad, so I hope we don’t focus too much on it.
We started off with lunges. He complimented my lunges, saying that they’re better. He said, “I can see you worked on them.”
He’s right, I have been working on my lunges. When I came to practice, I completely forget everything we did two weeks ago and only remembered the lunges. So for four days I worked on just lunges.
Then it was jumpsquates. Then lunges. I repeated this process three times before I stopped to do push ups and core exercises. My core is really bad. After that we repeated that process again.
Today’s workout was probably the hardest workout ever. It has to due with the fact since it’s a lot of high intensity cardio. My heart was pounding so hard that I could hear it. I wonder if this is normal?
Today, my heart was beating really fast. I was sitting down doing homework when it started beating up, but then it disappeared.
This reminds me of the heart palpitations of last year. They’re scary, but also harmless. However, it’s almost the one year mark, and I don’t think I should be feeling these sensations anymore.
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