When heart muscle is damaged from being deprived of oxygenated blood flow during a heart attack, scar tissue is formed on the damaged heart muscle, decreasing the pumping efficiency in the affected area. The elusive cause of the fatigue might also lie in the damage done by the heart attack itself. “Many people experienced the fatigue as new and different, not related to physical effort or a lack of rest it occurred unpredictably and could not be attributed to any definite cause.” Pia Alsén, author of this study, observed: I could find only a handful of research studies confirming what I was experiencing.Ī 2008 Swedish study out of the University of Gothenburg, for example, found that about half of all patients who survive a myocardial infarction (heart attack) are still experiencing “onerous fatigue” four months after the infarction. And nobody had warned me in hospital that this relatively common reality during cardiac recovery was heading my way.
It’s hard to describe this kind of relentless fatigue to those who have never experienced it, or to explain fatigue that is not relieved by just resting. And when we finally returned home (slowest pace in recorded history), I could hardly make it to the couch to recover from the exertion of this simple little walk. I couldn’t believe it! I felt like a frail old lady, barely able to shuffle one foot in front of the other. Ben and I had barely made it to the stop sign at the end of our block when I had to grab his arm to lean on for support all the way home. My post-op instructions from the CCU had been to walk outdoors one block a day for the first week, two blocks a day the second week, etc. I remember, for example, going for a walk one day with my son, Ben, shortly after coming home from hospital. Then away I’d go, tap dancing 90 mph to meet the day ahead, rarely slowing down until I hit the pillow much, much later that night.īut after I was discharged from hospital following my heart attack, I was gobsmacked to suddenly experience daily bouts of extreme bone-crushing fatigue that I could never have even imagined existed before. Once I finished leaping, I’d hit the coffeepot and then the shower, in that order.
CHF CANT STAY AWAKE CRACKED
I’ve always been one of those disgustingly perky early risers who leaped cheerfully out of bed the minute one droopy eyelid cracked open to discover the clock showed anything past 4:30 a.m. But generally speaking, on a day-to-day basis, never ever the kind of severe fatigue I experienced AHA. Or maybe even p leasantly pooped after my running group finished a long road race. Or tired at the end of a stressful day juggling deadlines in my public relations career. Or out-of-my-mind exhausted coping with a teething baby and a sleepless toddler. Or sleepy after pulling those all-nighters in college. Oh, sure, I’d feel sore working long hot days on our fruit farm as a teenager.
By Carolyn Thomas ♥ my whole life BHA (Before Heart Attack), I can hardly remember feeling real fatigue.
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