Ablation/S-ICD Recovery Time - why is it taking so long?

[AspiringVet]

Bit of a long one… Hi all, I’m currently recovering from a 4 week hospital stay and struggling with the recovery period. I was admitted for investigation due to a high burden of PVCs which were making me very symptomatic. I had a previous diagnosis of low burden of PVCs, as well as mild dilated cardiomyopathy and mild mitral valve prolapse. I was taking a low dose of bisoprolol and Ramipril, which worked well for a few years. There’s also a history of sudden cardiac death in my family, so everybody was being cautious! To be honest, my experience in the hospital was a bit of a nightmare - it was a constant battle to be seen and have anything done. Eventually, I was discharged after an ablation and having a subcutaneous ICD fitted. They switched me to nebivolol and kept the Ramipril. There was very little improvement over the next four weeks, so they added some dapagliflozin to help the heart muscle and try to reduce symptoms. I’ve had a little improvement but definitely not there yet, 6 weeks after discharge. I had planned to return to Uni and sit exams but have now decided to suspend as I’m just not feeling well enough. Am I crazy to think this recovery is taking ages?! I’m young and fit other than this. Was I naive in thinking I could be back to near-normal this quickly after all of the above? How long did other people’s recovery take?

[I-a-n-]

Hey. Surprised to see you've not had any replies to your post. I had atrial flutter which was corrected with ablation 2years ago. Recovery time for me was probably the best part of 8 months. This was how long it took for things to settle down - I'd been having episodes of ectopic beats lasting 3 to 7 days at a time, every couple of weeks. These episodes gradually became less frequent and taking bisoprolol as and when helped calm them down. 2 years in I'm still fine, active, get the odd runs of ectopics now and then but just live with it as a minor irritation. Best wishes.