Posted by Anders Kingstedt on April 07, 2002 at 12:26:52:
In Reply to: My First Setback posted by Tim Hawkins on April 07, 2002 at 10:00:03:
I'm still not sure what my abnormalities experienced are called (I THINK they were PACs...), but I went through some scaring experiences after having being released from the hospital. Anyway - I DID experience rapid heart beats on and off during the two months following the Maze. The first time they came on (about 12 days post-op) I thought it was Afib. Guess if I was scared / disappointed! The surgeon however reassured me that it was fairly common to experience rapid heart beats (whatever they're called) after a Maze operation, and that the problem would go away once the heart started to heal (which also in fact did happen). I was not put on any drugs and sort of "learned to live with it". The attacks lasted less than a minute (from what I can recollect), but were really annoying since the whole rib cage felt like it was going to burst because of the beating hammer like blows accompanying the phenomenon. Oddly enough, the rapid heart beats went away as soon as I could start to walk /jog again about two months out. I'm sure your difficulties will go away with time. Just hang in there and be patient. I wish you the best of luck.
Best regards,
Anders (currently in terrific form, by the way, running extensively inspired by the /almost/ spring like weather here in Sweden. Well, at least the snow is gone..(-: ...).