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).

 

Towards the end of July, we went off for a nice long holiday – three weeks and three days – travelling though Austria, into Slovenia, North-East Italy and back to Austria.  I absolutely love the Alps and there had been dark times when I never thought I would be able to go back and hike so it was a delight to be back there.

 

Less delightful was the humidity and heat (32˚ ) and the crowds although you can soon leave the latter behind with a good bit of walking.  We walked a LOT, up really steep hills and my Frenemy, Amiodarone, never let me down.  We also hired these ridiculously chunky electric mountain bikes and cycled up to the point where Austria, Slovenia and Italy meet (and also three of Europe’s main language groups also meet – Germanic, Slavic and Romance).  That was really hard work – gasping for breathe even with the big strong Bosch motors to help us – it was steep!

 

In Italy we decided to walk up Monte Lussari and ride the cable car down – by far the hardest walk I have done since all this trouble began and one of the hardest climbs I have ever done anyway – about 1200m of climbing.  Then for a so-called ‘rest’ day we hired sit-up-and-beg electric-bikes one day and cruised along the old railway line which is a very heavily used, and most wonderful, cycle path. 

 

Back in Austria we were just too tired out by the heat, humidity and walking to do lots of hard stuff so we went several days walking along the lake and swimming at the lidos.  How brilliant is that?  It’s just like going to a lido at the beach somewhere like Italy – sun loungers and umbrellas for hire, showers, toilets, changing facilities, sometimes a café – you can stay as long as you like for about Euro 5.00.  Just instead of swimming in the sea, there is a beautiful, surprisingly warm, mountain lake with superb views.  Bliss.

 

Five days back home, three of them at work and then we went to North Devon.   We had decided to walk the next section of the South West Coast Path (or THE Coast Path, as well call it, to distinguish from all the other lesser coast paths!).  We have completed the whole thing (630 miles) twice before, each time fully laden with camping gear.  The first time (1991-96) we camped virtually every night; second time (2005-09) we camped just over half the times and when we started the third attempt (2019) we were about 50/50.

 

The next bit we had to do was by far the hardest section including, as it does, the hideously up and down section from Hartland Point to Bude.  It was HARD.  It was cold, wet and very windy (on all-fours at one cliff edge section near Hartland Point) and we were tired from the Alps trip (oh my! First World Problem – too many holidays close together!), but WE DID IT.  And my heart DID IT - helped along with my old frenemy, Amiodarone – and my dodgy knees survived!

 

Time here, methinks, for a word about Amiodarone.  What a great/terrible drug.  It kept my heart as solid as a rock for 19 months except for that one blip (see previous post).  But its side-effects are legion (eye problems, thyroid problems, kidney and liver problems and lung fibrosis amongst other delicious ones to choose from).  I spent my whole time on it worrying that a bad run was a sign of lung issues or a tummy ache was liver failure etc.  However, I did not spend much time thinking about Afib.  So, swings and roundabouts hence it’s my friend and my enemy.

 

However, as explained in a previous blog, Royal Papworth Hospital are not happy for me to be on it for what could be (hopefully) another 25 years and seeing as I now ‘only’ have Atrial Flutter (AFl) they felt another ablation would be worth trying.  I fended this idea off for over a year before agreeing very reluctantly.

 

I waited over nine months for a date and then it was going to be full in the middle of the summer!  I explained to them my First World Problem (lots of holidays to fit into the school summer break) and they said they totally agreed I should wait until the autumn and to go off and have fun!  I needed to stop the Amiodarone six weeks in advance otherwise the Electrocardiologist (EP) cannot trigger the Afl and cannot do the ablation.  I felt it was too risky to do that while on holiday and so it was agreed I would stop it straight afterward the travelling.

 

However, first I needed something to stop the horrendous HHT nosebleeds I was having while on holiday, exacerbated by the heat and being back on the anti-coagulants.  I contacted my marvellous surgeon at UCLH in London and he slotted me in for a quick KTP laser treatment in September.  It sounds all so simple – day case, knock you out, laser the nose with a very specialist bit of kit, wake up, go home, but a General Anaesthetic never is that pleasant plus I had to have well over two weeks off work and also off of exercise!!!  A few days after the op I re-started the anti-coagulants and stopped the Amiodarone (scary!) with just over five weeks to wait for the ablation.

 

Once the nose was all healed, I then had three weeks to get as fit as I could for the ablation, the hope being that being fit would make it a quicker, easier recovery than the previous three which had dragged on for months and months.  I trained like a mad thing - running, cycling, heavy weights, rowing, hiking, Reebok Step, boxing even skipping which I hadn't done for - oohh - decades!!

 

Three days before the Ablation my heart suddenly decided to speed up to 100+ off and on until the day of the Ablation although it was even-paced so some sort of Tachycardia rather than Afib/Afl.  Gulp!!

 

To be continued…