Camping and Cardiac Rehab July 2025

 

27 August 2025

So, the 10 days or so, after that upsetting Occupational Health meeting, have been a bit of a see-saw! On the plus side the doctor signed me off until September as instructed by OH and I continued to make improvement physically.  However, my mental side is very varied – some days I’m fine other days I just feel like crying.  I wonder if it is some sort of delayed reaction to everything, I have been through in the last six years:

• ·         16 bouts of Rapid Afib, all requiring hospitalisation – 11 of them finishing with a DCCV (electrical cardioversion to restore heart rhythm). One episode led to extremely low blood pressure which could have been fatal.

• ·         Four ablations to correct the above Afib (none worked) – each taking 4-6 months to get some of normal (i.e. sporty) life back.

• ·         Four lots of treatment on my nose to help alleviate the HHT nosebleeds (three laser treatments; one skin graft)

• ·         One SCAD (also can be fatal)

·         A multitude of hospital appointments around the above problems plus the usual health stuff thrown in too.

No wonder I’ve been getting depressed! It all gets a bit much.  And I know there are a lot of people worse off them me but sometimes it’s just like WHY ME?

 Meanwhile I took the executive decision to stop taking my statin as my nosebleeds were terrible (up to five per day) and I was getting scared to even go out.  Within two days they had reverted to normal.  Nosebleeds are a known side-effect of Atorvastatin!! So, an odd choice of drug for a person with a bleeding disorder like HHT.

In mid-July I went for my Functional Assessment with the Cardiac rehab nurses.  Following on from that horrible OH appointment, I was terrified they were going to say the same as her and that I must no longer do the things I enjoy like running, cycling, weights, hiking etc.  I was so stressed that my blood pressure was really high!  I told the Cardiac Specialist Nurse what OH had said – she was livid!  She told me not to listen, that she had no right to say that, it was rubbish, it was completely unprofessional and that I should make a complaint!  So, I don’t think she agreed with OH then!!

She then told her fellow nurse who as good as shouted “Is SHE a cardiologist then?” so I don’t think she agreed either!  It was very comforting, but annoying that someone so lacking in knowledge as that Occupational Health nurse could cause so much angst.  I guess that is why she does not work as a 'proper' nurse (apologies to any excellent OH nurses out there, she just really upset me).

They made me do a shuttle walk (bleep test).  There are cones about 12m apart and you have to reach the far cones in time with the bleep. It started with a walk so slow I couldn’t physically do it and had to march on the spot and wait for the bleep to catch up!  By the end though I was running so fast to keep up with it – it felt weird to push myself like that after 10 weeks of people telling me to take it easy.

To be honest, they wanted to get my heart rate up to 132 (!) but I reckon that was too high for me (they use a standard formula) – both from my previous experience of racing with a HR monitor, but also because even at 122 bpm I felt I was really working very hard.

It felt great to be doing stuff though – and then two weeks later I started the actual cardiac rehab classes while carrying on with electric biking, normal biking, walking and Nordic walking albeit it all very carefully.

The classes were fun – I’m a Cardiac Rehab phase IV specialist, but we have never offered a cardiac only class as there is an excellent charity near us already doing lots of stuff like that.  And this, of course, was Cardiac rehab phase III, so the earlier steps back to fitness.

I was given an arm heart rate monitor and allowed to get my HR up to 132.  There was a long slow warm-up, then three circuits of nine exercises mixing cardiovascular stuff like walking, marching, stepping and bike with more strength-based stuff but always keeping the legs moving to keep the HR elevated.  I was started on level 1, but almost immediately promoted to Level 4!  Not that I’m competitive with myself or anything!!

I enjoyed it very much and was glad I had taken part – had a bit of a laugh with some of the other participants too. It was great having access to the cardiac nurses too - Ramipril gave me terrible IBS so the nurses spoke to the cardiologist and he told me to stop them (and the statins!)

The following week I was really very tired as I had done a lot of hilly walking while down in Kent camping.  They wanted me to go to Level 5 (maximum) but I said I was not ready to do so as I was so tired (my experience with all these cardioversions and ablations is that fatigue is always my main limiter).  By this time I had also bought my own arm Heart Rate Monitor so I was wired up well – my Garmin on the left wrist, my armband (Coospo?) on the left arm and their Polar arm band on the right arm.  The cheap Coospo matched within 2-3 beats with theirs, but my HR never got very high which is when I usually have my problems reading the Garmin (have tried the wrist pulse reader and a Polar chest strap, plus was given a whole new Garmin watch for that very reason).  We shall have to wait and see how it performs when I am really going for it!

 

We spent the rest of that week going for days out and doing a fair bit of walking and looking forward to our 19-day holiday to Finland – Estonia – Latvia - Lithuania, but it was not to be…..

 

TO BE CONTINUED