One week later

One week ago today, I had my cardiac cryoablation procedure. It’s obviously way too early to know if it was successful or not, but I do know that so far I’m doing okay (apart from the totally unrelated pain from the tooth extraction yesterday).

Several people had asked me if I feel “better”, and the honest answer is “no”. However, the first couple days I felt pretty good, which I attribute to a kind of euphoria at getting the procedure done—and that I got through it. After that, things quickly settled back to my normal. I haven’t noticed the absence of the dangerous medication I’d been taken, but the doctor told me it would be in my system for several months, so that didn’t surprise me.

After that euphoria faded, I was very tired. I’ve had lots of naps, sometimes several in one day (none today, though). Yesterday I slept most of the day after I got home from the dentist, roughly one hour at a time with breaks in between. At one point I thought I really shouldn’t allow myself to doze off, but it felt so good, and I was so tired, that I decided to just let it happen. If I’m really honest, it was wonderful.

I’ve been careful to not exert myself—no heavy lifting, and I’m not doing anything strenuous, in accordance with doctor’s orders. On Sunday, I took off the cling film-like covering my puncture wound, and it’s healing nicely. However, the first day I was home Leo jumped up in my lap, as he often does, and stood right on the site, and that hurt. He didn’t cause any damage, but ever since then I’ve been putting a blanket over my lap (or at least that part of my lap) to protect it. Leo loves the fluffy, cushy bed I made for him on top of the already cushy daddy stomach.

I should add that there haven’t been anything bad that might have happened: No angina, no racing heart beat, and no feeling of afib. The punched-in-the-chest feeling got better every day, and Saturday was the first day I realised that I’d forgotten about it, which was a good sign.

However, there have been a couple times I was unusually light headed getting up from a chair, which coincided with my nap periods. One day I was quietly folding washing, and I saw flashing lights at the periphery of my vision, which for Nigel always indicated a migraine coming on. I took to paracetamol tablets, as he would have done, sat down and had a brief nap. When I woke up, everything was normal and I felt fine. I have no way of knowing if these things are directly related or not, but I do know they’re not recurring things.

Other than that, there’s been nothing to report, as I expected.

The end of this week I’ll start resuming some of my normal activities, in this case, mowing the lawns. The following week, I’ll basically do whatever I would’ve done before the procedure. I was told to avoid strenuous activity for two weeks, so only one more to go, though “two weeks” is really said with an abundance of caution, and the doctor told me I could resume lawn mowing the end of this week (yes, I actually asked about that—maybe I’m obsessed with mowing?).

I don’t intend on commenting on this particular thing next week, and I wasn’t really going to say anything this week, either. But since I’ve been asked privately by several people how I’m doing, I thought I’d answer the question more publicly. Short answer is “fine”. I’m optimistic that things will go well, that the procedure will prove to have been successful, but I’ll have a better idea in a few weeks. And that’s something I’ll definitely talk about. In the meantime, no news really is good news.