A bit of walking and a bit of education.
The walking bit of my day came first. I can see the novelty of going out walking rapidly wearing thin, but for now I am not minding it. As the days get shorter I am kind of enjoying the opportunity to get out while the world is quiet and explore my neighbourhood with our dog. I am not going anywhere I haven't been before, but I am going there a lot slower and with more willingness to stop and look.
It is quite nice getting out and finding beauty in the familiar.
It would have been a perfect morning on the bike this morning, but that isn't really on the cards at the moment. Not being able to ride may be frustrating, but there isn't a lot I can do about that at the moment. What I can do is walk, and while I think I will get sick of walking soon, it hasn't happened yet.
The other thing that I did today was catch up with Dr Gary. Gary isn't my cardiologist, but he is my GP and also a mate and so it was good to catch up with him and discuss the goings on of the last couple of weeks. The chat with Gary didn't teach me much new, but it did confirm some things for me and it also clarified a few of the things I was uncertain about.
The first thing that the chat clarified is what the threat to me is. By that I don't mean that Gary defined the chance of something bad happening to me, but rather that he helped me to understand what could go wrong. Sounds strange I know, but I haven't really understood that previously. I have known that some sort of cardiac episode is possible, but not not what that would look like.
Gary explained that my ectopic beats mean that there is a chance that my heart could slip into a dangerous arrhythmia. If that occurred then the arrhythmia could eventually lead to cardiac arrest. That was the risk I was facing before I had the ablations last week and that risk hasn't really changed. What may have changed following the ablation is the likelihood of that outcome may have reduced. It is hard to know at the moment, but if the ablation decreased my ectopic beats, then the chance of arrhythmia may have also decreased. That is something that time and testing will help answer.
The other thing that Gary helped clarify is that, like Dr Stobie, he feels that a return to moderate exercise will probably be likely. If the ablation last week successfully reduced my ectopic beats, then Gary thinks that my risk of arrhythmia is likely to be lower too. I may be able to get away with moderate exercise without arrhythmia occurring. I say may, because at the moment there are no certainties. but the general feeling from Dr Stobie and Gary is that it is likely.
What 'moderate exercise' actually looks like is a question for another day and one that will take a bit of time to answer. But for now I am happy to settle for the possibility that it may be possible.
Speaking of exercise, tomorrow I am going to try a little bit more. Nothing particularly serious, just an hour of light spinning on the Kickr. As I mentioned the other day, Dr Stobie said that that level of activity should be fine, as long as I keep it light, which is exactly what I intend to do.
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