Cardiac Rehab with Dale

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, my dad has Cardiac Rehab at Grand Itasca. I thought I'd go through his routine, since I'm sure most people aren't familiar with it.

At cardiac rehab, heart patients exercise in a workout room while attached to a heart monitor. Pulse, blood pressure, etc are monitored throughout exercise to ensure that the workout is safe and effective. Dad is Grand Itasca's first aortic dissection patient at Cardiac Rehab (and consequently, probably the youngest as well).

When he first arrives, he starts by weighing in.

Dad then attaches the four electrodes that are attached to his monitor.

Here Cindy takes his blood pressure before the exercise. (Blood pressure is extremely, extremely important with my dad's diagnosis. He's on meds to keep his readings at a certain level. Due to these meds, at times his blood pressure will drop during or after the exercise, so they want to continuously monitor it so that they aren't sending him home with super low pressure.)

Usually, Dad will start with the NuStep bike. He's not using the arms yet (so as not to impair the healing of the breastbone), but he will be able to soon.

Next he'll use the treadmill. I didn't get a photo of this, but during this workout his blood pressure will be taken again.

At the end, he receives yet another blood pressure reading, and they'll evaluate the workout indicators - did his heart rate increase? What was the workload he exerted?

Dad's been steadily increasing the amount of time as well as the level of difficulty on both the bike and the treadmill. He's been doing great - we are so blessed!