DAYS 148-158 Recovery

First the good news.  Last Friday after working my butt off since mid April, I became a graduate of the Pardee Cardiac Rehabilitation Wellness Program.  Just as on my first day of the program, I had to walk laps around the gym.  How easy it was this time with my body working with me instead of against me.  Just to prove I could do it, I ran the last lap.  There were high-fives all around, afterward one of the nurses and I boogied to "Hit the Road Jack" blasting on the sound system.  I felt jubilant.  The average improvement for program participants is 20%.  My improvement was 69.3%.   Although there were participants with ages in the 50's and 60's, and one young woman in her early 30's, most were oldsters like myself with some well into their 80's.  Yes, it sort of blows your image of the typical gym with buff young bodies populating the place.  I saw no six-packs, but some were sporting beer bellies likely due to too many six-packs.  Many have much more to overcome than just heart problems, such as diabetes, obesity, inactive lifestyles, worn out and painful joints, arthritis, and lung problems from a lifetime of smoking.  I felt fortunate that my challenges were simpler.  I can't say enough good about the Pardee rehab program.  The medical staff couldn't have been better.  Knowledgeable, caring, funny, and enthusiastic, they made each session feel like a party.  While operated by the hospital, being in a separate location in town, I felt like I was going to a cool gym rather than a medical facility, thus eliminating the medical-patient victim attitude. 

Well, now for the not so good news.  The very next day, last Saturday, my heart rate, which is usually on the higher than normal side anyway (called tachycardia), averaging about 105 to 110 when at rest, soared to the upper 140's and low 150's and remained that way all this week.  In addition to my heart beating so rapidly, literally pounding, it's very irregular.  I thought all this was behind me since I had surgery over five months ago.  I took some leftover beta blocker that causes me to have such shortness of breath I can barely walk across a room without gasping.  It did bring the numbers down a bit, but only for a few hours after each dose.  Obviously that wasn't the answer.  I did vagal maneuvers such as holding my breath and bearing down like childbirth, face planting into a pan of ice water, forced coughing and gagging and putting pressure on my eyelids.  Of course I didn't do all these at the same time and of course I couldn't do them without laughing.  Some worked, but only briefly.  I saw my local cardiologist on Monday.  He confirmed that my heart was back in artrial fibrillation and my heart rate was out of control.  He tried carotid sinus massage, another vagal maneuver that requires being hooked up to an EKG machine while pressing with his fingers deeply into my neck.  This didn't work.  He put me on a different drug that takes about three weeks to become effective.  My husband's brother, a cardiologist in Nashville, felt I needed to get my heart rate and blood pressure down ASAP.  I went to Spartanburg SC on Thursday to see the cardiologist I worked with pre-op and he put me on an additional drug that works faster while also keeping me on the slower acting one.  It must be working because today my heart rate has stayed below 140, but it's still irregular.  Although I hate taking medications, I was relieved that he had a game plan that didn't include rushing me to the hospital as happened several times last year.  If this med doesn't do the trick then I'll have to go for cardio conversion shock treatments.  This was done unsuccessfully last October.  At that time my heart stayed in rhythm for only 15 hours and I was left with some nasty burns on my back and chest from the electric paddles.  The Cox Maze III ablation I had in February is considered the "gold standard" treatment for A-fib (atrial fibrillation).  It is done only if there is another serious problem with the heart, in my case a dis-functioning mitral valve, because it requires open heart surgery.  Claiming a success rate of at least 96%, leave it to me to fall into that other 4%.  It may be necessary to have another ablation done, but it will be through a catheter in the groin or through incisions in the sidewalls of the chest.

I had big plans for this week in the work toward my "Rocky moment," but the docs curtailed that.  They don't want me to do any strenuous exercise until my heart stabilizes.  I did take my little duck and my goat for a walk up the road to the top of our property this afternoon.  Once again Olive, the goat, is learning to walk on a leash and she did much better this time.  When we stopped so she could graze on crab grass and weeds along the road, I enjoyed inhaling the sweet scent of the honeysuckle growing wild around us.

Meds:   Coumadin, Amiodarone, Cardizem, Vayacog, L-Carnitine, Vitamin D, I-Caps, Flax seed oil, Multivitamin, Lutein, Hawthorne, Garlic, B-12, L-Arginine, DHEA, Resveratrol