On December 5th a cardiac ablation procedure for treatment of atrial fibrillation was performed on my heart. Today I went for the first run since that procedure.
It was like running with a new heart. Smooth and steady low heart rate appropriate for a slow run or jogging pace. (What’s the difference between a slow run and jogging? I don’t know.)
The workout session today was to be 2.1 miles on the same route that has been used for many months now. The first half mile was walking only. Everything seemed okay after walking 1/2 mile so I switched to a slow running pace of about 16 minutes/mile.
The plan was to observe heart behavior and switch back to walking if it acted up. It didn’t misbehave so I continued the slow run pace for about 1.7 miles. I felt very good and breathing was effortless as though I was walking.
The first few days after the cardiac ablation were the wackiest. On the day after the ablation and after breakfast and coffee in the morning, I had chest pains in early afternoon. It was sort of like a vise squeezing my heart. It was very uncomfortable/painful.
I had a prescription of nitroglycerin pills which I hadn’t yet resorted to, so I took one of those. It didn’t seem to help at all, so I followed the instructions, which were to take one every 5 minutes until the pain reduced (no more than 3 pills max, spaced 5 minutes apart.)
The second nitro pill seemed to make the pain a lot worse and I broke out in a light sweat and my eyes became sensitive to light, as if the nitro had caused the pupils to dilate.
According to the post-ablation instructions, if I had chest pain for 10 minutes or longer I was supposed to call 911. So I did and they arrived within less than 5 minutes and transported me to the nearest hospital Emergency Department.
They drew blood, performed several tests and did an echocardiogram. The chest pain subsided almost completely. I was there for a total of about 2 hours 40 minutes.
That was the worst thing that happened after the ablation.
That day and the next few days I felt very tired, like sleeping. I assumed it was partly due to the anesthesia wearing off and I did sleep between 10 and 12 hours a day for a couple days and didn’t have any coffee on the 3rd or 4th days.
By the 5th day I was still feeling like sleeping but had slept too much and couldn’t fall asleep. So I had some coffee and that made a huge difference and I felt almost normal again.
Though heart was in sinus rhythm it was still strange, behaving differently every day as though it was a horse getting used to a saddle. It’s rate slowed a bit each of those first few days.
On the 6th day, sometime in the morning between 7:00 – 7:45 AM when I sat to measure blood pressure & heart rate, it switched from sinus rhythm to what seemed like atrial flutter and its rate stayed at about 140 BPM all the rest of that day.
At sometime between midnight that night and 1:00 AM the next day, heart rate went back to a more normal rate of about 59 BPM with sinus rhythm and it has been in sinus rhythm ever since then, feeling better and better every day.
Two days ago I went for a 2 mile walk with no running and it behaved okay.
So today I ran.
Following are screenshots of training summaries and heart rate graphs for todays session and for 10 days of running sessions that were done before the ablation, so you can see the difference in the way it acted before and after ablation.
Happy rowing, jogging, running etc to you!