The heart of the matter
So the past month or so has been pretty uninteresting around here. I have had a little news, and I was waiting to post a blog about it until I had all the info, which I got today, so here you go.
A while ago—so long I don’t exactly remember when it started—I began to have arrhythmias. All I felt was a racing of my heart and abnormal beats, so I didn’t really know what was going on. It would only be a beat or two, lasting no longer than a few seconds. I would pause, take some deep breaths and it would go away.
That changed on my birthday, however. Atkins and I were walking to one of our favorite restaurants and I had a longer episode, probably at least 30 seconds to a minute. I had, up until this point, not mentioned these episodes to anyone, but I decided at dinner to tell Atkins because the increased intensity scared me a little. With our trip and the scuba diving coming up, I figured it would be a good time to get that all figured out.
I didn’t really need any more excuse to go to the doctor, so I made an appointment. I discussed all my symptoms. My physical exam and bloodwork came back normal, with the exception of mildly increased cholesterol. So, the next step was an ECG. In case you don’t know, an ECG measures the electrical activity of your heart. It’s that “spiky line graph” that you see in all those hospital shows.
My ECG at the doctor’s office was normal except that I was showing sinus bradycardia (slow steady heartrate) and sinus arrhythmia (heart rate changes with breathing). These are normal conditions. My heart rate in the doctor’s office was about 48 bpm. That’s pretty slow, actually.
So, since I didn’t happen to have an episode while they had the ECG leads on me, we decided to do an event monitor. This is like a portable ECG that you wear all day. When you feel symptoms, you hit the record button and it records the 30 seconds prior and following the button press. The coolest part is transmitting the ECG to the cardio center over the phone. It’s all done sonically.
Anyway, so I wore it for a couple of weeks and made some good recordings. I hit a little snag when I had an allergic reaction to the first set of leads they gave me. Fun stuff.
I heard from my doctor that the ECG was showing VPCs (ventricular premature contractions) and an occasional run of SVT (supraventricular tachycardia). Apparently my heart rate was up to the 90s with the VPCs and 140 or so with the SVT.
The next step in this saga was to get an echocardiogram done. That’s an ultrasound of the heart and basically looks like this:
The labels are added after the fact, of course. :)
I had this done on Monday. My doctor called me this evening and told me that everything looked completely normal. I have the same reaction that I always have when a test for a problem comes back “normal” which is frustrated relief. Relief that my heart is okay but frustrated that I still don’t really have an answer.
The doc doesn’t seem too worried about it. He says as long as the episodes are not interfering with my daily life and I don’t have any other symptoms, he is considering the condition to be benign.
So, long story short (too late), I have a normal abnormal heart. At least, that’s how I like to think of it. I’m hoping that nothing comes of it, but I have to say that the episodes, even if they are benign, are a little disconcerting. We’ll see if anything progresses or if the situation changes. As of right now, I’ve been given the green light to scuba dive, which I will be doing very shortly! Hurray!
I hope that you are well and that life is happy. Drop me a line!
