Intro

Hi all, I’ve been having fun reading your stories for quite a while now, and since I just got my second ablation, I figure I’ll share my adventure so far.

I have been basically healthy and active my whole life, but heading towards my 50th birthday I decided I wanted to do an Ironman. It was my first shot at a real endurance event and I had a good training cycle and a successful race. Shortly after that, my wife started occasionally mentioning that my heartbeat sounded odd at night, but I was ridiculously healthy so I didn’t worry about it.

One day I went for a run at lunch and after about a mile I couldn’t run anymore. I couldn’t figure out why because at that time I could run a half marathon anytime I felt like it. After this happened twice I went to my doctor, he did an EKG and it was normal, he did a bunch of blood work and basically said I was fine.

I started having less and less energy, put on some weight and while I exercised more than most people do, I was definitely feeling way less fit and I was tired all the time. At some point I got a pretty nasty flu like virus (this was mid 2018) and went to see my doc again. This time the nurse noticed I was in afib and all sorts of fancy beeping machines were brought in.

I was sent to a cardiologist who treated me like every other afib patient he had ever seen rather than look at my case individually. Put me on xarelto and metoprolol and cardioverted me, which lasted about 4 days and I was back in persistent afib again. Cardioverted me again and lowered my metoprolol dose since it was making my blood pressure extremely low. Second cardioversion lasted 4 days as well.

By this point I was getting annoyed since I’m not overly wealthy and this was getting expensive. I had been doing a lot of reading and told the cardiologist I wanted a referral to to the EP team.

These guys were immediately an improvement and I could tell they were looking at my case alone and not just lumping me in with everyone else. I’m at a loss why they didn’t refer me to the EP team to start with, I could have bought a nice new Tri bike with what those cardioversions cost me and had enough left over to get one for my wife too. We tried adding propafenone to my regiment but it didn’t play well with my body and I was completely unable to get my heart rate raised for any kind of exercise.

We decided on a cryoablation, the surgeon said there was about a 1 in 3 chance it would require a second procedure but he was confident he would get me beating sinus rhythm. The ctyoablation worked like a champ for about 9 months, but when it went bad, it was a train wreck. I was in and out of afib constantly and now I had flutter too.

Back to the surgery room I went, this time for an RF touch up, which the surgeon said required a lot more work than he expected. A week and a half out and I have been blessed with a nasty head cold which seems to be causing a little havoc with my heart, but it’s not afib or flutter and we’re pretty early in the blanking so I’m not freaking out too bad.

Anyone else here had a similar experience? Good outcome after the touch up? I don’t have any crazy notions about doing another Ironman, but a 10k would be fun.

Welcome echomonkey!

I'm not an ablatee, but I've been on this site for nearly 16 years. As well, chronic fitness was my path to afib at age 49, so I do have some perspective.

With a successful ablation, I would suggest not viewing as a "cure," but as an aid to staying in NSR. The question is whether the progression that caused you afib in the first place could continue. Exercise may be good for the heart "plumbing" but, in excess, can be bad for the heart's electrical system. I know that for me it is the product of intensity and duration that is a trigger and was my initial path to afib. Short and intense (like Tabatas) is OK for me. Long and moderate is also OK. Long (and a 10k is long for this purpose) and hard can be a trigger. In this post about my son-in-law, I mention and link to info on Zone 2 training (which you may be familiar with as a bicyclist) and MAF training. If you want to run a 10-K, I would do it, not to see how fast you can finish, but how fast you can run it using your MAF heart rate. My friend, Mark Cucuzzella, who is an MD, endurance athlete (30 marathons under 3 hours) and MAF follower told me he always trains to feel better when he's done. That is, he's never exhausted or beat. He always trains easy. My hypothesis is that adopting this attitude would give you the best shot at being able to be active and having your ablation "hold."

This comes from my observations of others who've posted here over all these years, as well as my own experience.

Good luck!

George