AFib Asian

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

5 Month's Post Ablation

5 Month Report

In a span of a few days since the echocardiogram I've been contacted by my PT and we've discussed next steps. Coming off a very whirlwind weekend after running two races. Report below for those needing to catch up.

I got a call from my cardiologist office to book my follow up, but of course the appointment that they were going to schedule me for would be mid-June and I would be in my 2nd holter. So they have to call me back with some availability in July. 😞 But as I've been told and reminded that if there was cause for concern they would see me right away so I continue to monitor as always and make sure to go easy. BUT now my PT has requested, with approval from my cardiologist, that they are going to put me back on the Stress test treadmill. The last time I was on the treadmill I managed to keep up with the pace until my legs said no more. However, I was in Atrial Flutter so I wasn't able to provide the necessary data to calculate the heart rate zones properly since my HR was elevated. So I go back with a normal sinus rhythm next week and cross my fingers for some interesting results.

So life is moving along. In fact, it's all leading up to race weekend. Go #TeamHeart

So if you could sponsor me that would go a long way to help out other heart patients like me.

https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/FundraisingPage.aspx?registrationID=4402977&langPref=en-CA

1st May Weekend of races

(cut and paste from Facebook)

Race 1 - Fort Town Night Run aka May the Fort be with You.

Well this weekend has been a whirlwind to say the least. I ran two races both Saturday and Sunday. I wasn’t sure how my body would feel let alone my heart ❤️ but I was on a bit of a high because my Rehab PT has been constantly checking on me. The care from the Heart Institute has been amazing in my rehabilitation. If you saw my blog you may have seen my post about a recent echocardiogram (still waiting on results) but according to my PT she doesn’t have concerns. So with that news I was supercharged and went into my races with newfound enthusiasm.
First up a fun run in Prescott called the Fort Town Night run but aptly named the May the Fort be with you since it just happened to land on May the 4th and if you don’t understand that saying and you’re not a fan of The Big Bang Theory then crawl back under your rock. I entered the 5K and there was a 1K and 10K option.
I felt comfortable sticking to the 5 only because I wasn’t sure what this course would be like. The race started off fairly gentle with a downhill from Fort Wellington that allowed us to run the boardwalk along the lake. The evening sunset 🌅 was amazing. Little did I know that running the town of Prescott had so many hills 😳 but I only slowed down for the one water station near the end and then picked up my pace. I managed to have a nice kick near the end. Something that I have not done in quite some time. I met a few of the running room gang along with Run Ottawa and even a Frontline ambassador who I’ve known on the Twitter for some time. He was doing the 10K but it was nice to finally meet IRL. I also met Joanne from Twitter also. Once I got my geek 🤓 medal I headed back to my car as I had to be up to be ready for race 2 in the morning. The drive to and from Prescott is about an hour. The race started at 8:20p so it meant I made it back to Stittsville around 10:20p.

If you’ve read this far then up next is my 2nd race of the weekend. Thanks for reading along.

Flat Dan ready

Arrival at the "Jedi Temple"

5K bling

10K bling

This is not the dog you're looking for

Queen Amidala

Met Yves from Twitter IRL

Race Director - Mike Larose

Kids 1K

View along the boardwalk

Fort Wellington

Quite the nice course

The lighthouse

post race selfie

Race 2 - Manotick 5 Miler

Morning came way too fast and I had intended to leave early to see the 10K folks running at the start but by 8a I wasn’t moving quickly. So I got there about 9:10a once I found parking at GT boutique.
I checked in on social media to kill some time but I could hear the excitement so it sounded like the 10 milers were already coming in. I made my way and caught some photos of Amanda, Clark, Alexandra, Mireille and Jennifer. I also saw Vicki and Gesine but wasn’t paying attention and didn’t snap some photos. I met Kim from IG and my Hamilton loving spirit guide Lindsay. Also saw Chad and Christine who also did the Fort Town night race (10K) and they were doing the challenge. 😳 now that is amazing.
I connected with Michelle who I knew would be able to run with me. Well at least I thought so 😉 she did amazing with her 2/1’s she was focused! We kept leap frogging each other until the last turnaround and she took off 😁she was determined.
The course had changed the last time I ran this race and it was definitely so cool seeing these houses and people along the route cheering us on. It’s definitely a community builder.
But along this course change was some hills which I’m sure they put in on purpose. 😉 but it didn’t phase me and just kept chugging along. It was a beautiful day for a run and even warmer than I thought. Also the distraction of beautiful mansions didn’t help 😂. The last hill was not something I expected but I took it as character building. Once I made it back to the Main Street I opened it up and picked up my pace. That’s two days in a row and 2nd time I was supercharged to make it to the end and finish strong.
That was my weekend. Nothing too crazy. 🤪

Flat Dan

Clark

Amanda

Alexandra

Jenn

Lindsay

Start/Finish

Michelle

1st beer in like 5 months

Post race selfie

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Echo One to New Ink

Echo One

Early in my April posts I eluded to wearing the 2 week Holter and then getting the results AND waiting for an official follow up. Of course when your cardiac rehab is calling you wondering if you've heard back from them and you've been told by your cardiologist in a nice way..."Don't call us we'll call you." then you're left in limbo in trying to figure out what next? Then this past Wednesday, May 1st I got a call from the Heart Institute saying I need to get an echo-cardiogram. So I asked when they had an opening and they said oh we have a cancellation can you come at like 8:30a tomorrow? Of course I said yes!

So off I went to the heart institute Thursday AM. and I brought Mei-Ling with me as we both had another appointment of mine which I'll talk about in the next section. So we arrived in plenty of time and we registered or rather I registered. Met with a nice tech who obviously was bilingual or maybe more, but he literally sang instructions in both official languages which I found highly entertaining. Having the ability to see on the monitor how your heart works is truly amazing at the technology and apparently handles 3D and 4D modes. The 4th if you're wondering for trivia questions is flow. Blood flow in this case.

Echo-cardiogram - May 2/19

The session was about 40 mins or so as I banked on being there a lot longer, but it seems that the tech was able to gather enough images and mentioned to me that my heart beat was strong and a good steady rhythm. (I didn't see AFib, but I'm not an expert) Overall, from the tech perspective, everything looks good. Of course I'm not exercising hard the past couple of weeks so it's been very low volume. In any case I was able to leave feeling relieved hearing things were ok, but of course still need the appropriate interpretation.
Ironically enough as I was at work I saw a voicemail left by my cardiologist's office and I finally got a call, but not sure what to do with that news as she was going to book me in for mid-June and now they want to push it back to July once she gets some dates from him so it will be like 7 months since my Ablation and I may see the cardiologist for the first time.

New Ink

Since ML and I had a lot of spare time we decided we would have breakfast at the Heart Institute. They have a cool cafe called "Tickers" 😊

Big Breakfast - 2 eggs, bacon & home fries

You're probably saying that doesn't look healthy! And you would be correct, but I have to be realistic and not cheat myself. #YOLO and if I keep myself active and honestly eat this way moderately then really it's not going to be so hard when one day this will not attract me as much.
Also I was allowing myself to have a good meal before I was off on our next adventure. I was heading to the village of Rockland to have a concept tattoo piece I envisioned myself getting. I had ML draw it out for me and then gave it to Jodi's favourite artist Nelson of Espada Tattoo who took ML's drawing and somewhat re-imagined to a tattoo like piece.
So for those who haven't been following this blog or just tuning in I was trying to mark the occasion of this piece with more of a rebirth (Phoenix) and the heart embedded inside the Phoenix as the proverbial the beat goes on; and the words Rise Up that is somewhat fitting for the role of the Phoenix and of course for those that admire the music from Hamilton the Broadway musical. So somewhat dual purpose.
Nelson did a great job in putting the piece and made it fit with what I have already on my shoulders.

New Ink to mark the rebirth after my Ablation

What do you people think?

Thursday, May 2, 2019

April Showtime

Montreal Getaway

For Christmas I gave the girls tickets to either Broadway style show or concerts.

So early on in April and in my April Awakenings post I talked about meeting Nicole and a trip to so Lia could attend a concert, but I didn't post some other photos of us and the condo and exploring churches in Montreal.

So this is the cafe I met Nicole at.

I do know the girls had an amazing time at the concert and it was her first real experience in a venue where it was her and one of her BFF's

No concert photo but here they are as we figure out the Metro

So while the two girls went on a shopping excursion Kiera and I went and walked our legs off and explored a whole bunch of churches. I took too many photos but will not bore you with them as I don't remember all the names anyways so here's just a couple of pics.

Each church had amazing architecture

1st church we saw just outside the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth

Rare selfie

Photos do not do this justice

Fun trip, but definitely if the traffic/construction was better we would enjoy it more, but we didn't want to be stuck in downtown chaos. As it was there was an accident as we were leaving and we managed to be stuck in the jam.

Toronto Getaway

The final series of the showtime was for Mei-Ling seeing Dear Evan Hansen and a date night with her mother so we took the opportunity to give ourselves a bit of a getaway and head to another AirBnB and enjoy the family time. As it was we discovered that I need a AirBnB lesson in checking out places in where we go as this was in a high rise apartment and reminded me so much of when we lived in Toronto. Don't get me wrong the apartment was just fine for us for sleeping, but definitely not a hotel and the price was somewhat appropriate for what was provided. Especially since we had parking included and with a hotel that would have been an additional cost. Needless to say it was enough to get us through the weekend even if the kids had a bit of a wake up call on trying to get away from hotel luxury living. 😜

Part of the itinerary also was that we flew ML down to the Island on Porter as she finished her last exam and is now done Year One of University. So this was her first solo plane ride and even though it was just like an hour flight it was solo while the rest of us braved driving to Toronto through rush hour. ML handed it like a champ, but really it was pretty uneventful.

Another adventure we did was visit The Cheesecake Factory so we indulged and had to see what the big deal is all about.

Sure add a skinny menu to make it better

I had to make room for this Reese's PB cheesecake

While Kiera and ML went to see Dear Evan Hansen, Lia and decided to watch IT. I had never seen it but she wanted to so it was quite entertaining. Sure there were some scary parts, but it was more entertaining watching Lia squirm. 😊

After the movie I went out and picked up the theatre goers at the Royal Alexandra and heard how amazing the musical was. Lots of tears, but definitely worthy of all the musical awards it received.

#YouWillBeFound

Oh and of course I went for a quick jog out to burn off some of the awesome food we had!

still maintaining the turtle pace

Lower Don River bridge and yes this is the bridge the bloor/danforth subway line is

finish at the sketch apartment

Our drive back we also stopped in Kingston as someone had a craving for gourmet grilled cheese. So we pulled into K-town and stopped at MLT DWN and enjoyed some good eats with waffle fries.

Delish

So after indulging ourselves I finally had the chance to explore the Brockville Railway tunnel. I've seen so many people post this in the past and I needed to check this out myself.

It was quite amazing what they've done.

difficult to capture what this experience is like

I'm a caboose runner and this is my support 😃

One end of the tunnel

Saturday, April 20, 2019

April Awakenings

Training

RunCoach

If you have signed up for Ottawa Race Weekend you may have seen an option for Run Coach. Run Coach is an online coaching app that helps you build a training plan to achieve your goals. In the past I've signed up for the Running Room Clinics and I've also dabbled in the Peak Performance Training. I'm taking a look at this app as 1) it was free with registration 2) it's about accountability when I felt I didn't want to be with an actual program that I couldn't adjust as if I'm at a clinic or with another plan it would have been tricky as my recovery/rehab has taken priority. With that being said I've been slowly returning and using the RunCoach to lay out my progress. What the app does it syncs to my Garmin data and calculates with its algorithm to develop a plan for you.

Campus RUNch

Selfie outside my building

So I'm giving it a try and will keep you updated. It's about 35 days to Ottawa Race Weekend and I'll be ready for my 10K. So we shall see if I'm ready for my goal, but realistically I'm running it for Team Heart and spreading the word of awareness for the Heart Institute.

RunCoach Online Dashboard

Cardiac Athlete Meeting

I got a chance to meet with a fellow CA in Montreal when we went to bring Lia to a concert of one of her favourite artists Conan Gray. So we had a chance to chat over coffee.

She is an amazing athlete and overall amazing person that has overcome a lot since her cardiac arrest.

Nicole and I by McGill and Mont Royal

Run to Beer - Pint Series

On April 7th I participated in the 2019 Run To Beer - Pint Series and it featured my teammates from Team Awesome. It was great to meet fellow ambassadors IRL, It was nice to get out to run. I had registered for the 10K, but knew that I needed to keep it low mileage so I started out at the back of the 10K crew and decided to go and see if I can turn around at some point and head back. It was a great day and a great run to head out for a run with the crew. I found a great place to turn around by the giant steps on Colonel By and headed back around Echo drive and did a Bank Street loop.

Run To Beer - Dan's modified route

If there's beer you may find my teammate Jenn aka OmmMama

Warm up with Yoga on Tap Ashley

Jenn was doing an IG takeover of Ottawa Marathon.

Post photo of the Team Awesome crew

Q/A with the crew

Road Race #2

Rather than regurgitate the post I did on Facebook. I will link it up here to show and post some extended photos. I made it public so you can read the race recap I did.

https://www.facebook.com/dan.pak.904/posts/10156088443906766?sfnsw=cl