Healthy Benefits of Walking with My Husband

My husband and I started walking together about one-and-a-half years ago, before we got married. We loved the time to talk and long conversations together. We would go for our walk in the nearby park which has a three-and-a-half mile road and then return home for a nice big breakfast.

During the first year, my husband had four different surgeries which interfered with our walking progress. One day my husband cried that he thought he would not live long to enjoy our new-found love because he was bleeding profusely from the rectum. I accompanied him to the emergency room at the nearby hospital, and they admitted him. They did all kinds of tests on him and diagnosed him with a cancerous rectal polyp, which they removed.

After a few days of caring for him when he got home, we returned to our walking but took it slowly. We had much to talk about and be thankful for. We quickly returned to completing one-half mile walks. We would walk and then turn around and head home, stopping on a bench to rest, watch the passersby and talk. After a few months, during testing at a doctor's visit, two aneurisms were found in my husband's arteries. The doctor planned the surgery, and we continued to walk, discussing how we would keep up the walking because being in better shape could only help our health and the results of the surgery.

After my husband was hospitalized, they had to open him up the entire length of his abdomen. We tried to give him ample time to heal, a few weeks, and then we started our walks together again. I had tried to take some walks by myself while he was resting and recovering from the surgeries because his doctor told me not to neglect myself. It was very lonely, but I knew he was at home getting the rest he really needed right then.

At my husband's follow-up visit to the doctor, he said there would be one more surgery that would be necessary to repair the aneurism that he couldn't reach during the last surgery. They were waiting at least one month to allow him time to heal and for the medical insurance to approve the surgery date.

My husband recovered with remarkable speed, and we were soon walking about one mile a day, plus my husband kept insisting on carrying a lot of groceries to help us and I think to prove that he was getting stronger. It soon became apparent that he had a hernia in the old wound site. This is a very common occurrence. His doctor said it would not be difficult to repair the hernia and would probably only take one day's stay in the hospital. So shortly after that, he was admitted to the hospital and had the hernia repaired without any problems. He healed rapidly from that surgery.

I began to have more physical problems though. I had neglected myself almost completely as far as exercise, and we had both begun eating at a nearby fast food place because of the convenience and inexpensiveness. It took us several months after his last surgery on the artery in his leg, and another one day admission to the hospital, to wean ourselves off the fast food. We then began walking more regularly on the park path again.

Just two weeks ago, we began completing the walk all the way around the park, which is about three-and-one-half miles. On Saturdays, there is a Farmer's Market right outside one of the entrances to the park. We grew to love stopping there briefly to buy a fresh seeded loat of Italian bread. Sometimes we would buy a little fruit. Once we treated ourselves to a small cider donut.

For the last two days, we have walked all the way around the park. We are aiming to make the three-and-one-half mile walk at least three times per week. The other days we walk one to two miles plus, since it is Summer and the temperature is getting very hot, we follow the walk up with sitting on a shady bench. We watch the passersby and have some long talks. Sometimes we carry sandwiches and a drink with us if we haven't already eaten. We don't want to get dehydrated, so we carry water.

We love each other very much, and the walks add to the joy we get from our relationship. Although we talk to each other at home and enjoy shopping together, we do most of our heavy talking while out on our outing. Since we're both writers, we're often on the computer working in our own world when we're at home.

We both weighed ourselves two days ago, and we're adding doing that to our routine. There's a good scale in our regular pharmacy which also takes blood pressure. What we are also still working on is eating a good diet. Although we have added lots of the fresh produce that is now in season, I tend to eat too much of the sugar-free ice cream which I know still has calories, and I should cut way back on my portion of it. I'm working on that now.

It's very important to wear comfortable, cool clothing during the Summer months while walking, so I recently purchased two, one hundred percent cotton shorts and tee shirt for our walks. Tim wears his walking shorts and a muscle shirt. We often give each other a hug on our way to go out to walk and when we sit on a bench for our rest. We love to give each other a kiss too. We have grown even more in love over this past year-and-a-half that we have lived together. We even got married in a civil and then in a religious ceremony.

I really recommend working at an exercise and nutritional program together with your spouse because the rewards are great. When we could only walk short distances, we usually held hands, but now my physical therapist told me to swing my arms when walking, so we both do that but we keep walking right next to each other.

There are days when one or the other of us has to go slow, but we allow for that. We've told each other that if one of us needs extra walking, it's perfectly fine to go out walking alone, but we really enjoy walking together! This is a story of how we didn't allow life's setbacks to ruin our relationship or exercise program. I think you can work harder when you do it holistically, including all aspects of your life program.