Interesting News

Received some very interesting news last night from my Cardiologist Dr Stobie.

I had just jumped into bed at 9:45pm when I heard my watch buzz. I thought it was just telling me that I had got an e-mail or something similar and so I ignored it. It wasn't until it buzzed again that I realised that I had missed a phone call from Dr Stobie.

Luckily Dr Stobie left a very nice message so I was able to get the gist of the news that he had.

In brief he confirmed that what I felt during my Stress Test was correct and it did indeed go well. The results showed that I had no strings of ectopic beats (couplets or triplets as they call them), there were only isolated ectopics present. The way he explained it on the phone was that if they grabbed a person off the street with no idea of their history and they had the same stress test results then they would consider the person fine. Big tick for me then.

I still need to have an appointment with Dr Stobie to get a better run down of the results, but from the phone message yesterday and another summary e-mail today I have a rough idea and that rough idea is encouraging. Basically, based on the results, Dr Stobie is happy for me to get back to some moderate exercise. I have been exercising regularly for a couple of weeks now, but with that exercise I have been taking it very easy. The phone call last night wasn't clearance to now go crazy, and it also wasn't permission to go racing (he specifically said that) but it does mean that I am allowed to work a bit harder which is great news.

Now that I have that permission to exercise a little more I am going to have to be extra vigilant about overdoing it. Over the past few weeks I have struggled with the conflict between what I feel like I want to do and what I know I should (or shouldn't) be doing. Despite knowing that I need to be careful with how hard I push myself I find that the old guilt gene still runs strong. I can have in my mind that I want to do a bit of exercise, but then realise that the heart is feeling a bit tired (hard feeling to describe, but definitely noticeable). When this occurs I know that the best thing for me is to rest, but the part of my brain that is used to pushing on no matter what is busy telling me that I should suck it up and go training. Turns out it is very hard to shut that part of the brain down, even when you know that not training is in your best interest. You end up in the interesting situation where you are proud of yourself for doing the right thing and resting, but also feeling guilty because you didn't train. Slightly frustrating, but something that isn't going away any time soon.

Not a problem tomorrow though. Tomorrow I am planning on taking my newly permitted exercise and giving it a bit of a spin. Literally. The plan tomorrow is to meet up with some of the guys from Break Your Limits for a gently Easter ride into the hills. This will be my first trip into the hills since surgery and so it is going to be a very tentative process. It should be fine, as long as I can let myself take it easy when and where I have too. I have never actually managed to take it easy in the hills before, so tomorrow could be a challenging day. Looking forward to it though.