Now 3 months past ablation

[Jturner1074]

Hi everyone, this is my first post. I figured I should probably participate in some way because this forum has been a good resource for me both pre and post ablation procedure. First I'll give a little bit of background.

I'm 44 years old, and a very active person. I've always been relatively fit, and for brief periods very fit and quite competitive. I've been skateboarding for 30+ years, and competitively bike racing (road) since 2013. My health habits have always been okay, other than probably enjoying beer a little too much at certain points :). If you had told me a year ago, that my active lifestyle and bike racing would make me a candidate for a heart condition I would have laughed at you. My cardiovascular fitness on the bike has always been outstanding (for an amateur bike racer).

Back in 2016, I stopped wearing a heart rate monitor after the one I had before stopped working. I have power meters on all of my bikes, so I trained with power instead of heart rate. I have a feeling that if I had continued to wear an HRM and capture that data I would have caught this much sooner before I needed a trip to the hospital.

Anyway, at some point last year, during the summer of 2017 I realized that I was constantly tired, sleeping in a lot, unmotivated to train or do much. I had thought, well maybe I was overtraining? I decided to take some time off to see if that helped me snap out of it. That didn't seem to help. Fast forward to February 2018 and I started to develop and very sharp chest pain that wouldn't go away, and started spreading to my back and sides. After 2 days it was so bad I couldn't go to sleep, so I went to the emergency room. They immediately hooked me up to an ECG and seen that I was in flutter. Around 120bpm and not in sinus rhythm at all. I wound up in the hospital for 4 days under observation. On a constant drip of cardizem for the whole time my heart finally started to settle down. During my hospital stay, I met my electro physiologis Dr. Mbu Mongwa. He sat with me and explained to me what Atrial Fibrillation was and that I'd be going home, but would have to be on medicine (cardizem) for the forseeable future. And that they were going to install a loop recorder in my chest for monitoring. I went home, I was told I could keep exercising, but I needed to keep a careful eye on my heart rate during those workouts. I'd find out after the first couple of times out on the bike, that my heart rate monitor would read 200+ beats per minute if I had an episode during a ride. Not something you like to see when you're not even pushing your limits.

Fast forward to June 2018, Dr. Mongwa informs me that he'd like to perform an ablation to see if he could get some quality of life back for me (he knew it was killing me not being able to train like I was used to). We scheduled for July 31st 2018.

I had my ablation, and everything went as well as expected. He stated that there was a lot of scarring in my heart, and that it confirms his suspicion that my Afib was caused by repetitive stress from pushing my heart for sometimes hours at a time on the bike.

It's been a weird time since then, after the ablation I immediately felt some of my old energy return (that I had not had in almost a year). It was almost upsetting to feel it again and realize what I had been missing for so long. It's been a long frustrating 3 months as my heart continues to heal and I get a little bit stronger every week. I've only had one episode since the ablation, and that was from when I pushed it a little to hard and went on a hilly century ride (100 miles) last month.

My most recent check up with Dr. Mongwa went really well, I still have the loop recorder in my chest so he gets weekly updates from that. The ablation seems to have worked so far. Last week he finally let me stop taking cardizem, and that has also improved my mood and ability to exercise in a positive manner.

If anyone is browsing through here, like I have been for the last 10 months and is considering an ablation I can say that it's been a pretty positive experience for me thus far.

Finally I'd like to thank all the people that participate here, and provide a resource for people to come in and see what others have experienced. I gained a lot of reassurance by reading throught some of your posts and it helped with the psychological aspect of all this. I'd also like to apologize for lurking so long before I made a post.

If anyone is in the same boat I was (fit person, competitive, all of a sudden faced with this issue) please do not hesitate to ask me anything about my experience. I can go into much more detail :). Thanks everyone.

[Hidden]

Thanks for your post, interesting reading and we see time and again that fit active people can be caught out with AF. You can't win!

[BobD Volunteer]

Thanks for the update. Yes athletes and fighter pilots are prime cadidates for AF. It must be hard to know that you can't do these things to the same level any more. Everything in moderation eh.

[Gincalpe]

Encouraging story thanks. Enjoy the active life but let your heart heal fully before pushing it too hard.

[Hidden]

Hi. A 100 mile hill country bike ride 6 weeks after your ablation might be risking the chances of success of your ablation. Or does your EP feel that is not a problem because you are young compared to most here and very fit?

My EP gave no advice about exercise after ablation but many here will say wait 6 months before pushing it. Easier said than done for athletic types.

[Jturner1074 in reply to Hidden]

My EP basically told me after a couple of weeks i could start building up again, and that it was up to me and how I felt. Started slow with 20-30 miles rides, then 40-60, a week before the 100 mile ride I had done an 80 mile ride with no issues. For some reason the 100 mile ride was the one that did it! The episode lasted about 3 hours with my heart at 140-150. Since then I've kept the rides to 60 miles or less and there's not been a problem. The effort and pace during those rides are pretty steady and not at all what I feel like is pushing my boundaries. Probably won't try anything harder again until spring (starting to get cold here and not riding as much).

[RichardT71]

Encouraging read. Thanks for posting.