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Recovery from Ablation #4 - and some major drama!

  Recovery from Ablation number four 16 October 2024 – And so I’d had the famous Pulsed-Field Ablation – promising faster recovery! Plus this time I went into this pretty fit – I had trained hard as I could all year – got super fit in the spring, then missed two months with whooping cough, hiking in the summer, three weeks off for my nose op and then trained like a loon for three weeks! The ablation was as described in my previous post.   The first week was as usual – felt drowsier and more lethargic than I had recalled.   I had all wild plans to STUDY! REVISE GERMAN! AND FRENCH! AND ITALIAN! FINISH MY ON-LINE ADVANCED SPORTS MASSAGE COURSE! UPDATE MY BLOG! DO SOME WRITING! PLAY THE PIANO! In the event I managed a bit of reading, knitted some teddy bears and a bit of a jigsaw puzzle.     No energy to do more. Slept badly like I always do after an ablation – my shins were just killing me – I’m not sure if this is some sort of referred sciatic pain ...

A PULSED FIELD ABLATION FOR A CHANGE (ABLATION #4)

  Adventures of a Racing Heart – A Pulsed Field Ablation this time! So, to the words of the old Whitesnake song “Here I go again now…”.   Back to Papworth for ablation number 4.   I’d previously had the cryoablation isolating the pulmonary veins in 2020, eleven months later in 2021 a Radio-Frequency ablation of Left atrium and then eight months after that another RF of Left Atrium.   Needless to say, I was not frightfully happy about having this done again and not very confident about the outcome, but I’d been warned I could not stay on amiodarone for years and years so felt I had no choice. This time I was not due to the hospital until 11 am which left a hideous amount of time to hang around the house being nervous especially as I had to be up to eat a light breakfast at 7 am. On and off since the Friday afternoon, three days earlier, I was in some sort of tachycardia – started after doing some crouching while weeding in the garden.   This continued off a...

A great Summer and then a FOURTH ABLATION!!

  A Great Summer and a fourth ablation What a great summer it was! Do you have to go through a few years of rubbish to make yourself appreciate the good times?   Maybe…   In June, just over a week after the latest Afib episode and admission to hospital I ran the FEN GALLOP 10 KM.   Nice flat course, out in the Fens north of Cambridge, partly on concrete farm tracks and some cross-country stuff – rough field edge paths and some rooted forest tracks.   Just my cuppa tea.   I ran about 1 second faster than the Ely NY 10k but that was all tarmac so I was pleased and felt like I had got back some of my fitness after the Whooping Cough and that visit to hospital.   Sadly, I never did to see just what I was capable of when I was at my fittest when I was doing running drills, plyometrics and proprioception work, but to be honest I was amazed I could do any of that stuff at all at my age and with my history (and, more especially, my dodgy right knee). ...

A reminder about me, HHT, Afib and what I know about it - and a depressing list!

  A reminder about me and what I know about HHT and Afib So, what do I know? Well, firstly, I have them both!   HHT is a genetic bleeding disorder, characterised by malformations of the blood vessels which bleed – these can be in the nose (90% of patients) plus also could affect the lungs, brain, gut, mouth, liver, etc etc.   It can be a contributor to Afib as the mis-plumbing in the liver can lead to increased pressure in the heart and cause problems.   Nobody really knows and it is estimated that only 10% of people who have HHT are diagnosed.   I have seen many ENT specialists over the years and they are all pretty uninformed about it – I was lucky enough to know it was in my family via grandad, aunt and mum.   My nosebleeds have been treated at a specialist centre in London with a laser ablation.   I’ve had this done four times plus one skin-graft where they took skin from the thigh and patched the nose with it in the same manner as a puncture r...