The HHT and Afib Athlete

  The Athlete part of the title is finally coming true - I'm running again.  It's really feeble - I'm following the old style Couch to 5k which I have used many times before, but progress is almost non-existant. I started with 1 min run/2 min walk and have now got to 1.5 min run/45 sec walk.  It's killing me!  Some of the running intervals are at 13 min miles pace!  I should be delighted that I am back running but instead I am hating how hard it is. And now I have a terrible cold and feel awful so that's a week or so off. To be frank, I'm pretty fed up.  It's completely irrational - I've had 20 visits to hospital (15 of them emergency admissions) in just over three years and here I am feeling depressed because running is so hard! In fact, the reason running is so hard IS because I have spent so much time in hospital in the last three years.  So I need to cut myself some slack. I'm feeling forgotten too, by family and friends - they are bored with my

  So my last blog ended with me saying I had a lousy cold back in May 2022.  This developed into a nasty chest infection (but it wasn't Covid) and meant my return to work was delayed two more weeks!! I finally got back there on 21 June.  Oh the joy of feeling like the new girl yet again and finding that all the good tasks have been dished out to other people and I'm left with the menial tasks.  But then again, who can blame them?  I've been away as much as there the last three years.... sob! Even that return nearly never happened when, once again following a knap, I went into Afib on 18 June.  Luckily, after four hours, while stuck in resus in Addenbrookes Hospital it self-converted for the second time ever.  I like it when it does that as the recovery is very swift. At this stage I contacted my arrhythmia nurses at Papworth and updated them.  They, and my EP, were more adamant than ever that I needed a fourth ablation and I was still more adamant that I did not want/could