Getting over a cryo-ablation - Report at One Month post-procedure (JUNE 2020)
One Month on...
Obviously, me being me, I had a PLAN: Once the first two weeks were over I was going to spend a month walking; then progress to cycling and rowing for a month and then finally to running. Sorted. Then three months of running would see me back to peak fitness (for me) and normal life could resume. Easy!
And to my great surprise I felt great for
the first week. Sure, the hip/groin area where the catheter went in was sore
and I walked with a limp but I was able to potter around a lot although a walk of
a few minutes didn’t feel good on the wound.
I did some gardening (repotting, nothing strenuous) and after a week I
managed one mile of walking, though I was quite tired and slow, as mentioned in my previous post at two weeks post-ablation.
So I had expected this recovery to take a while and was pleasantly surprised by how well I felt for the first two weeks of moping about the house. Then I had a couple of days of feeling very poorly (tired and lightheaded) which made me panic The progress didn’t so much stop as completely reverse.
I felt more tired, more
fatigued and generally not great. I
posted on the AFA website-cum-forum and was shocked and upset at the
replies I got. Basically, I was told that I was being an
idiot and that (and this is a quote) “I would undo all my EP’s good
work…”! It was very upsetting and very
scary. And, besides, just how do you UNDO a burn?!?
After a few days of upset, I decided to ring the Papworth arrythmia nurses and spoke to Reef, who is just the loveliest person. She asked what I had been doing – I explained it was short walks, some stretching and some yoga. She reaasured me that what I was doing was “absolutely perfect” and that she couldn’t understand what the people on the forum were talking about! She added that she was a bit “surprised” that the AFA would let such stuff be written on their forum! So that was reassuring.
She also explained that recovery is a slow business as it took several months for the heart to recover from its trauma and its inflammation. Obviously, these days, as with all operations/procedures "even heart transplants...", they don't like people to be inactive for more than a day or two. She repeated about seven times about how “perfect” my approach to recovery was which was a huge weight off my shoulders after the 'trolling' on the Afib website.
After that it all continued in the same pattern. I can now do practically everything indoors and have also been gradually increasing gentle yoga (is there any other sort?!) plus a few gentle Pilates exercises. That's all fine. I get 2-3 days of feeling good and then 1-2 days of feeling tired so I expect my pacing could improve!
Even before my ablation I had read an excellent study on-line which had revealed how the recovery from ablation bore no resemblance to what the EPs tell us! Nobody in this particular study was 100% recovered at FOUR months though 75% were at six months (and 25% still weren’t). I’ll post the link at the end.
The one thing that I struggle with is walking. I had expected to be able to walk 0.5 - 1 mile each day by week 5 and instead I can only manage that some days and then nothing for next day or two, plus legs feel very tired and weak during the walks.
It's extremely tedious and I am extremely impatient to do more. BUT I just keep reminding myself that firstly, despite the tiny scar it was major surgery and secondly if I hadn't have been lucky enough to get this ablation now I would have just been fully recovered from my cr*p year (2 nose ops, two stays in hospital with afib, two cardioversions with associated 1-3 month recuperation, two nasty viruses etc) and then I would have had to go in for the ablation and start the rehab all over again.
So onwards and upwards, even thinking of getting an ebike to use during this rehab process (especially as the correct number of bikes to own is N+1 where the number of bikes you currently own is N)....
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5811184/
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