Column: Getting back to normal life after heart attack
You’re out hunting, enjoying a beautiful Montana day. As your hiking up a hill, you suddenly become short of breath, and you start to feel pain migrate down your arm, even into your jaw. A rash of fears comes rushing into your mind, and you soon find yourself in the back of an ambulance, on your way to the hospital.
February is the American Heart Association’s National Heart Month, and the professionals at the Cardiac Rehabilitation Program at St. John’s would like to take some time to share with you the phases of rehabilitation that you will go through to help you on your road to recovery.
The first phase pf Cardiac Rehabilitation begins while you are still in the hospital recovering from your surgery. During this phase you will begin walking the hospital hallways with a rehabilitation specialist two to three times daily to help you regain your exercise endurance.
This first step may seem small, but it is really a major step to help your transition from hospital to home. A couple of days prior to discharge, you and your family will meet with a discharge planner to review your home care. The discharge planner will review activity and exercise guidelines as well as care of incisions and infection prevention.
The second phase comes after you have been discharged from the hospital. At this point, with the referral of your physician, you may choose to begin an outpatient cardiac rehabilitation program. The program encourages lifestyle changes, and is generally offered three times a week for a 12-week period.
Outpatient Cardiac Rehabilitation enables individuals with heart disease, and those recuperating from cardiac surgery, to efficiently and effectively resume an active, healthy lifestyle. You will participate in monitored and supervised exercise aimed at improving your cardiovascular function and modifying your cardiac risk factors.
For your own comfort, exercises will start at a low intensity and gradually move up as your own tolerance and endurance levels improve. The goal of the cardiac rehabilitation program is to prescribe an individualized exercise plan to stabilize, slow, and sometimes-even reverse the progression of your cardiovascular disease.
A wide variety of exercise options are available, including treadmills, recumbent bicycles, and weight training equipment. In addition to exercise, the program offers education sessions which focus on nutrition, stress reduction, and blood pressure and cholesterol control.
Phase III of your program is the maintenance phase. After 12 weeks, Cardiac Rehabilitation graduates are ready to incorporate what they have learned into their everyday living. The goal of the program is to make exercise and good nutrition a lifelong commitment.
The team of health-care professionals has given the graduates the information and training they need to make the correct heart healthy choices moving forward. They are encouraged to exercise at home, join a local fitness center, or take up a walking routine.
St. John’s Lutheran Hospital offers a Phase II Cardiac Rehab program for patients that have had a heart attack, coronary artery bypass graph (CABG), stint placement, valve replacement, or angina. If you have any questions, please call me at 293-1025.
(Ruth Fenn is a registered nurse with the St. John’s Lutheran Hospital Cardiac Rehabilitation Program).