Ever since the heart bypass surgery, I’ve been working on recovery. Part of that is attending cardiac rehab, but also walking a lot more on my own. Since we can’t go out anymore, I’ve been walking on the treadmill in my garage. I even walked a bit last night. It was only 15 minutes and 0.5 miles but I felt fine afterwards.
Today at UCLA, I parked in the underground garage and put on a blue surgical mask to walk to my appointment. I noticed that it was kind of hard to breath through the mask material. Not two minutes later, I was running out of breath and panting like I’ve run a marathon. I pull the mask down a bit and it was better but still felt like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. This happened to me once before when I was out walking but I was back to “normal” the next time. Anyway, this happened several times today: walking back to my car after cardiologist appointment, and walking from/to my car at work. I hope it was the mask cutting off air to my lungs and nothing more serious. Other options are some kind of effect from the arrhythmia yesterday, or more several symptoms of a COVID-19 infection.
Life with chronic diseases 