Mended Hearts Open Forum

Hi to All.  I'm new to the board, and was hoping to hear some experiences from Rehab class.  I had my first class on Monday, second class will be today.  I hadn't done much cardio at all for a couple months prior to my stent procedure.  I found the first class pretty difficult, and am still tired today.  Is this normal?  Has anyone else experienced the same as they began rehab? And did it get better?

Thanks, and I look forward to your comments.  

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Bob Williams
Gladstone MO
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Bob,

Seven and a half years ago, at age 67, I had a heart attack. and emergency quintuple bypass surgery followed by ventilator induced pneumonia. When they woke me from my medically induced coma, after a few more days, I began inpatient rehab. My first day in rehab was learning to stand up from a wheelchair. I also had to learn to feed myself again.

Within two weeks, I had improved so much that I was given a free pass permitting me to wander anywhere I wanted in the rehab hospital. I eas released the following week, enrolled in outpatient rehab and was walking two miles a day two weeks after my release. Two months later, I was back at my normal gym lifting weights and doing calisthenics. Two months after that, I was running again.

Give it time.

Ira

Every time I did anything new after the surgery, it was like I had been through an athletic spring training for a couple of days, then it was better after recovering. Recovering from both the effect of the disease before the surgery and the surgery itself is a double challenge. I'm at 4 months from the surgery as of yesterday and swam a straight mile earlier in the week, slowly, but something I was able to do a few years ago and not since, and then I felt tired again for a couple of days. But during cardiac rehab it was simply waking up the deflated muscles in my upper chest by using them with light weights that wiped me out just as much.

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Peter DeWeese
Blacksburg VA
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