Status Report
Six weeks after open heart surgery for aortic valve replacement, I had my first stress test to see how things are doing. This came about after having some tachycardia incidents last week.
For those of you who have never had a stress test, the procedure is fairly simple. First, you are given a thorough echocardiogram, which gives an indication of the blood flow patterns in the heart and the size and shape of the organ. You are then wired to a heart monitor and you step on to a treadmill. They put the treadmill on a 10% grade, and every 3 minutes they increase the speed until you (or they) decide you can't go any farther. Once you are done, they quickly pop you back over to the echocardiogram machine and take some new pictures of the heart under stress.
The pictures went very well. The valve is working as expected, and the aortic regurgitation is gone. The main problem the surgery set out to solve is solved. So it's time for the stress test. The main problem that I have with the treadmill is that I haven't done any running since the surgery, and really not that much before that. As things speed up, I'm not really getting winded. On the 20-point exercise scale, I probably don't get above a 14. So I'm not anywhere near the point where I need to stop for heart or wind. But, after 12 minutes, I just didn't have the stamina or leg speed to keep up with the treadmill.
I got my heart up close to 130 bpm while doing this, which is the fasted I've had it since the surgery. And I had no arrhythmia whatsoever. So the problems of last week were either transitory, possible caused by surgical inflammation that is now healed, or, well, something else. Obviously. But the upshot was that my cardiologist has no problems with me picking up the exercise pace. In fact, I've been told to start pushing the heart rate up in cardiac rehab so that, if there is a problem, it happens there while I'm being monitored. At this point, the belief is that any such problems will be temporary.
I was also told that at 3 months post-surgery, I can consider the bones fully healed. So on Jan. 18, I can start doing pretty much anything I want. Which means I may get some curling and skiing in this year after all. I've also been cleared to start playing the drums, as long as I don't reach. This means I can play the snare, practice rudiments, and possible the hi-hat as well. I'll be getting miz_hatbox to help me set things up this weekend. And I can start lifting 2 pound weights in cardiac rehab, which will help the muscles a lot.
The pictures also showed that my heart, which had started to grow before the surgery, has shrunk back to "normal" size. And so it appears that the small amount of damage that was done by the initial problem is reversing itself. This was the hope before the surgery; that fixing things now would give the heart time to recover before permanent damage was done. That appears to be the case. I've also been taken off the blood pressure meds I was on before surgery, and had the other meds lowered. So I'm well on the way to getting off all the temporary pills. Which will leave aspirin and blood thinners, required for the new valve.
Needless to say, I'm quite happy about the results.
For those of you who have never had a stress test, the procedure is fairly simple. First, you are given a thorough echocardiogram, which gives an indication of the blood flow patterns in the heart and the size and shape of the organ. You are then wired to a heart monitor and you step on to a treadmill. They put the treadmill on a 10% grade, and every 3 minutes they increase the speed until you (or they) decide you can't go any farther. Once you are done, they quickly pop you back over to the echocardiogram machine and take some new pictures of the heart under stress.
The pictures went very well. The valve is working as expected, and the aortic regurgitation is gone. The main problem the surgery set out to solve is solved. So it's time for the stress test. The main problem that I have with the treadmill is that I haven't done any running since the surgery, and really not that much before that. As things speed up, I'm not really getting winded. On the 20-point exercise scale, I probably don't get above a 14. So I'm not anywhere near the point where I need to stop for heart or wind. But, after 12 minutes, I just didn't have the stamina or leg speed to keep up with the treadmill.
I got my heart up close to 130 bpm while doing this, which is the fasted I've had it since the surgery. And I had no arrhythmia whatsoever. So the problems of last week were either transitory, possible caused by surgical inflammation that is now healed, or, well, something else. Obviously. But the upshot was that my cardiologist has no problems with me picking up the exercise pace. In fact, I've been told to start pushing the heart rate up in cardiac rehab so that, if there is a problem, it happens there while I'm being monitored. At this point, the belief is that any such problems will be temporary.
I was also told that at 3 months post-surgery, I can consider the bones fully healed. So on Jan. 18, I can start doing pretty much anything I want. Which means I may get some curling and skiing in this year after all. I've also been cleared to start playing the drums, as long as I don't reach. This means I can play the snare, practice rudiments, and possible the hi-hat as well. I'll be getting miz_hatbox to help me set things up this weekend. And I can start lifting 2 pound weights in cardiac rehab, which will help the muscles a lot.
The pictures also showed that my heart, which had started to grow before the surgery, has shrunk back to "normal" size. And so it appears that the small amount of damage that was done by the initial problem is reversing itself. This was the hope before the surgery; that fixing things now would give the heart time to recover before permanent damage was done. That appears to be the case. I've also been taken off the blood pressure meds I was on before surgery, and had the other meds lowered. So I'm well on the way to getting off all the temporary pills. Which will leave aspirin and blood thinners, required for the new valve.
Needless to say, I'm quite happy about the results.