I posted in this thread a little bit a few years ago leading up to a half marathon, and then for a short time afterwards. Then I went off the grid.
The half was in October 2010 and I ran a 1:50 which was a great time for me, I was never much of a runner before and my goal when I started training was 2hrs. Then I set out to train for a fast (for me) Thanksgiving 5K with a sub 21 or 22min (I forget exactly) goal. Whatever it was Id done a practice run the weekend before and only missed by 10 or 15 sec so I knew I could crush it in a race. Then the race went horribly wrong.
I ran the first mile in 7 minutes but had to stop, couldnt breathe, felt like my heart was going to explode out of my chest. I walked/jogged in to finish around 28min, and I felt like death. I was wearing a heart rate monitor and when I downloaded the data it showed some insane numbers, I forget exactly but well over 200bpm at points. I should have gone right from the race to the hospital but instead I sat down for 15 min, got my body settled, had a couple of beers at the host bar and went home and enjoyed Thanksgiving Day as usual.
I did some looking online and speculated at the time (to myself, no mention to anyone else) that I had Atrial Fibrillation (AF), a condition where the top chambers of the heart flutter quickly and erratically, giving the lower chambers that pump blood out to the body an overload of electrical impulses, or signals to pump. The result is that the heart rate can soar even when resting, and even more so when active. But I went out for a couple of runs the following week and felt okay so I put off going to the doc. And then Id have a bad one, and another good one and so on. This went on for a while, kept putting off going to the doc, eventually just stopped running when there were no more good runs to be had. I still felt fine otherwise though with day to day activities, just decided running wasnt for me.
During this past summer I started feeling like crap at times even with doing regular stuff like yard work, running up a couple of flights of stairs, etc. I finally made an appointment for a physical. Part of my hang up before, and one of my excuses for not going, was that my longtime primary guy retired in 2009 and I never found a replacement doc. I had not been sick at all since and had stopped with the annual visits. But in August I finally got a recommendation for a guy at Mass General here in Boston and made an appointment for an October 15 physical, the first opening he had. In the meantime, between the time I made the appointment and the time I went my body was tanking. There were so many signs looking back that should have made me go right to the ER but I kept thinking Ive got the 10/15 date. Id find out whats up then. And I kept it all to myself. Did not miss work, coached my kids teams, socialized, went to parties.all was good as far as anyone else knew. The weekend leading up to my 10/15 appointment was Columbus Day weekend. That Friday night wife and I went out to dinner with four other couples. After a few bites of dinner I went to the bathroom and puked. I texted her to meet me at the car and I spent the next three days on the couch with feeling awful with a "bug". I knew it wasn't a bug.
I showed up for my appointment Tues and told my new doc Id been feeling lousy: no energy, easily breathless, no appetite, nausea when I did eat, waking up at night struggling to get a good breath, persistent congestion in my chest, etc. He skipped the normal stuff youd usually do and hooked me up to an EKG, looked at the results and called an ambulance to bring me to the MA General ER. At the ER the a-fib diagnosis was immediate. My resting heart rate was fluctuating between 130 and 190! The ER folks told me I had to be admitted so they could get my heart into a normal (sinus) rhythm, hopefully with medication but in the unlikely case that didnt work they would do a cardioversion where they reset the heart by shocking it back to rhythm think hospital tv show where they do the paddle thing where the body convulses off the table. The ER nurses thought Id be there a couple of days at worst.
The larger problem wasnt the a-fib though, it was heart failure. HEART ####### FAILURE!! I still hate to use the term, but thats what I have. They did an echo-cardiogram to measure my ejection fraction (EF, the % of blood expelled from heart with each beat). Normal range is 55-70%, mine was 15% (aka really ####### low), and my heart was enlarged. Theory is Ive been in a-fib for years and that beating at that fast a rate for such a long time did some serious damage. How I was living like this was a mystery to everyone. I had docs coming and going talking about quality of life, survival rates, transplants. WTF???
This post is getting way too long so Ill skip a bunch of detail but it took 12 days of mixing and matching meds to get me stable to the point where I could leave the hospital. Id lost 23 lbs, nearly all of it water weight. When your hearts not pumping it cant get rid of water. Oddly I was the same weight as Id been for years, mid 190s, but towards the end I was eating next to nothing. So any weight I would have lost for lack of food I was keeping on in water. When I finally left I had to wear a Zoll LifeVest, an external defibrillator worn under the clothes. It looks like a giant bra with a bunch of electrodes and wires attached to monitor my heart, and the whole thing is attached to a battery the size of an early 90s cell phone that I had to wear attached to a sling over my shoulder - like a large purse, 24 hours/day (could take off for showers). If I went into cardiac arrest it would shock me back to life, but not before vibrating and warning me, at which point if youre conscious and not really in cardiac arrest you can disarm it. You dont want to be shocked when conscious. I got a lot of warnings, and if youre not quick enough to disarm it starts giving loud, robot-voice warnings telling bystanders to STAND BACK!!. I got several of those at inopportune timesreally ####### embarrassing.
I had to drastically change my diet: reduce salt to a bare minimum (1500 mg/day) cut out caffeine and alcohol altogether, avoid any strenuous activity (I could walk slowly on treadmill, could not lift anything, shovel snow, do anything taxing whatsoever) take the 5 meds Id been prescribed religiously, and restrict liquid intake to 1.5 litres/day. I also had to weigh myself daily to make sure I wasnt putting any water weight back on, and take my BP a couple of times a day. I did all of this religiously through Thanksgiving and the holidays. The goal was to show improvement in EF at my echo-cardiogram scheduled for 10 weeks after discharge. I needed to get my EF to 35% to avoid getting an implanted cardio defibrillator (ICD). I read a ton and it was a real longshot to improve that much that quick.
Well I had the echo Wednesday, and got the results late yesterday afternoon. Im back to 47%!!! MA General is one of the top three places in the world you want to be treated if you have this problem, and this my Dr. is the head of the Heart Center. He did not use the term miraculous but he was floored. Over 3X improvement in that short a time is damn near unheard of. I still have heart failure, there is no cure for it once you have it. I will be on meds for the rest of my life and I will have to stick to a strict diet. It will likely be what gets me in the end but as long as I stick with the program Im not going to die in a couple of years which frankly is what it looked like.
I asked him what I could do physically and he said it was okay to increase the cardio gradually while always being mindful of heart rate and how I feel. Ill likely never run another half marathon or the full marathon I always wanted to run but never did, or try to set PRs in 5K. But after three months of being a miserable, depressed, self-loathing (so much guilt, why didnt I go to the doctor three years ago????) ##### I jogged a single 10 minute mile on the treadmill today at lunch today and it was the best ####### run of my life.
Looking forward to the next one.