So I’m just about 4 months post surgery so posting an update.
Everything was going well, I came off most of the drugs and just stayed on bisoprolol 2.5mg twice a day. I started walking on the 23rd June, two weeks post surgery., with a gentle 700m stroll to the local shop and back. I did reduce the bisoprolol dosage to 1.25mg twice a day.
I wore a Polar Verity Sense Heart Rate Sensor as the Apple Watch sometimes struggles to pick up my heart rate (I’m guessing the low pulse from bisoprolol is a contributing factor here). On hills I’d make sure my heart rate didn’t exceed 120bpm which worked well. I built up distance and time and managed a 7km walk on the 13th July.
Early August we had a weekend away and did some lovely walks around Staithes and Runswick Bay.
I also started doing some 15 min Zwift rides 8 weeks post surgery and slowly built those up over the weeks until I was doing 30 mins by mid Sept, all the time keeping my HR under 120bpm.
I did a walk/run on the 15th August, walking when my HR hit 120bpm, I managed 1.75km which once again I built up slowly.I
On the 7th August I reduced the bisoprolol to once a day and everything seemed ok, however I had a “blip” which started on the 21st August with an Atrial Fibrillation episode that lasted around 5 hours. The episodes continued every 48 hours, but the length of each episode kept reducing and I self converted back to sinus rhythm each time. I did up the bisoprolol to twice a day on the 28th August.
I had my last “blip” on the 3rd September, with a very short episode that self converted within 2 minutes. Since then I’ve had no further A Fib episodes.
The Apple Watch AF History shows the little bump quite clearly and shows the huge improvement in burden since the operation.
I was given the all clear to push on a bit and discharged from the hospital on the 6th Oct. I’ve just finished a 45 min TrainerRoad SweetSpot work out, my heart rate behaved as expected.
Final step in the process (I hope) is to wean off bisoprolol…..
