The Most Important Pre-Surgery Prep You Can Do

There’s a lot of things you have to do before surgery. Your doctors will have a bunch of appointments for you, you’ll have to meal prep for when you get back home again, if you live alone you’ll have to arrange for someone to collect your mail for you, and feed your pets and water your plants while you’re away. It’s going to feel like a whirlwind.

There’s something else you have to do, though, that’s really important.

DISCLAIMER

What I’m about to say is really necessary advice — the best I have to give you, really — but don’t listen to it without first talking to your doctor because I don’t know your circumstances and they can tell you for sure if this advice is going to be right or wrong for you. So talk to your doctor. Don’t just say you’re going to and then not do it because I can’t see you through your screen. I can. If I can see monsters, I can see you.

Before I Get to the Actual Advice

If this is the right advice for you, your doctor will tell you to keep doing your cardio workouts, even if you can’t do nearly as much as you used to. And this is excellent advice, because a strong heart heals faster, and every little bit helps. So walk around. Put on some music and dance. Punch stuff. But there’s more to think about than cardio strength.

Babou will not work out with you, but he supports your efforts all the same.

When you’re done with open heart surgery, your sternum will take eight weeks to heal. That’s two months (yes, I can math). The thing you might not realize about what it means to have an un-healed sternum is that you can’t use your arms to lift anything heavier than 5 lbs. (that’s about two and a quarter kilograms, or 10-12 russet potatoes if you’re American). For two months. So there’s a lot of things you have to think about in advance and plan for.

Things like how heavy is your water bottle when you fill it up all the way? How many pounds of pressure do you have to exert with your hands to open the jar of strawberry jam in your fridge? If you put one thing at a time in a pot on the stove are you going to be able to lift it off the stove when it’s done? But not only that, you have to ask yourself (and this is where the advice comes in), how much do you weigh? Because most adult humans weigh more than the bag of russet potatoes I mentioned in my last paragraph.

I know what you’re thinking right now, you’re thinking “I don’t have to lift myself or any other person while recovering from surgery”. And maybe you’re right. But do one thing for me right now: Go lie down in your bed as if you were sleeping, and then try to get yourself out of bed without using your arms at all. Don’t just keep reading as if I can’t see you, go do it. And don’t just teeter on the edge of the bed in a way that no human ever sleeps, really lie down on your bed. How easy was it to get up without using your arms? See? So here’s my best piece of advice:

The Best Advice I Have

Work on your ab strength. Not only that, but your legs too, because you’ll have to get out of chairs without pushing yourself up using the arm rests. And think about the fact that, after surgery, you’re going to be even weaker than you are now, so if you’re thinking it wasn’t easy but you could sort of do it, work harder.

Tips on How to Do That

I always used to do sit ups. And not crunches either, all the way up, all the way back down again, and repeat. However, doctors, nurses, and fitness experts have all told me that I’m not allowed to do those anymore. When you’re asking your doctor if you can still do exercises ask them to explain this to you. I don’t remember the logic behind it, but I believe it had something to do with how the positioning of the upper body puts extra stress on your heart, and nobody reading this post needs that.

The fitness experts recommended that, instead of sit ups, I do dead bugs. You can find a video about how to do those here. I’ve also done planking to strengthen my core, but I have no word about that from any doctors or nurses or fitness people. Maybe I should check on that with the team.

Then, for legs and stuff, I mostly just dance. But squats and lunges do good things too. If you need a music recommendation for strength stuff, I always liked AC/DC for that kind of thing.

AC/DC did not sponsor this blog post. Photo credit Josh Cheuse, Rolling Stone, November 2020

To Sum Up

So, once again, because I cannot stress this enough, talk to your doctor and make sure working out is okay for you to do. And, if you get the green light, work your core, work your legs. And then, after surgery, you can get up and kick some ass.