Recovery One Year on from my Heart Attack
I’m not doing too well with my mission to re-gain some fitness. I obviously lost loads of fitness after my heart attack but have been trying to regain at least some of it ever since.
Recovery
Initially I was unable to do anything other than some short walks. I’d been through quite a trauma. There was lots of damage to my heart tissue, some of it permanent. Like any other injury it needed time to heal. Unlike any other injury though the consequences of not letting it heal properly were probably more extreme. I was therefore very careful not to overdo it in the initial stages. The medications that I was (and still am) on didn’t really help matters either. Many of them are intended to stop your heart from working too hard which just doesn’t work well with someone trying to exercise.
Then there was the confidence side of things, I’m still not confident enough to push things too hard as I just don’t know if my heart can take it. I did start however some gentle running, cycling and swimming in September last year after doing an Exercise Stress Test to see if it was safe to do so. All checked out OK and I was able to start trying to regain some fitness. It went OK for a while and you can see my initial progress in the chart below.
The chart starts off two years ago in July 2020 when I was at average fitness. My ‘fitness’ chart stays high with a few little dips here and there due to holidays, lockdowns, lurgy etc, but generally stays at a level of around 100. That is until June 2021 when I had my heart attack and the fitness dropped off to next to nothing. It started to level off a little in August as I was able to get out walking again and then started to pick up throughout the end of 2021
There was a little dip around Christmas 2021 and then it continued rising.
Injury and Set Backs
Next I started to do some Coast Path Runs in Pembrokeshire. These involved weekends away so I tended to do more exercise at the weekend and rest a little during the week. You can therefore see the fitness chart level off a little and get ‘spikey’ for a few weeks. There is then another dip back to post-heart attack levels of fitness during February and March 2022 thanks to some torn ligaments in my ankle.
Stuck at Base Level
Since then I’ve been pretty much stuck at this base level. There just seems to be one thing after another that stops me from doing the exercise I’d like to be doing. After the ankle injury there was a sore back and shoulder. There have been days when my chest hurts more than others so I’ve taken the precaution of taking it easy for a day or two. There has been a holiday to Sardinia, other little trips here and there and then I had another visit to A&E a few weeks ago after collapsing at home.
The latest set back that I’m dealing with is a cold that has turned into a chest infection. Not only has this resulted in headaches, body aches, a sore throat and of course time away from any exercise, but all the coughing has meant that I’ve pulled some muscles in my ribs that are now pretty sore. I’m not over it yet either. It’s all I can do to sit here at the computer and write a blog post or do some work so there’s no chance of reversing the decline for a few days at the least.
Building Back Slowly
I’ve got plenty of plans and I’m quite happy to build the fitness back slowly. I’m not even aiming for the lofty heights of 2 years ago but it would be nice to get some consistency and not have quite so many setbacks.
There is a limit to my patience though. It’s now been a year since my heart attack and according to my fitness and freshness chart I’m pretty much smack bang where I was before I started the initial recovery. Back down to the base level I was at after my heart attack. By the time I’ve got rid of this chest infection I’m likely to be at a lower level of fitness than I was a year ago. It’s certainly not ideal but there’s nothing I can do other than suck it up and start all over again. Maybe this is just the way things are now that I’m getting older, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to accept that yet!
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What a shame x
Nothing you can do though other than rest,recover and return to normal, as you say you’ll never ready to give up yet .
Please take care Alan have loved your blog over the years.
I suspect some of your medication taes away some of your natural defence mechanisms against these minor ailments.
Obviousy your heart has taken a battering and may just take a long time in recovering.
Wishing you all the best.
Bill