Cardiac Scares

March 5-March 19

(from an email to my brother Wayne)

This post doesn't fit the mission statement of my Travel Journal, but I wanted to have it somewhere in addition to my computer. Don't bother reading on if you're not interested in my personal health problems...or perceived problems.

I'm fine - got a "heart: healthy" result from the stress-echo test yesterday. But the preceding week or so had me confused and wondering...

So I thought I'd write this up as much for me as for your information.

Before I went to Nepal I was jogging over to the library - about 6 blocks. Now, I don't run much, never did, but I can usually manage 6 blocks. After three blocks I just couldn't go any farther - not enough air or not enough circulation or something. Anyway, I didn't think much more about it although I did monitor my level of exertion while in Nepal so I wouldn't get short of wind while hiking (well, actually walking the short distance from where the van dropped us off to the launch or back from the landing zone) with the 50 lbs of paragliding gear.

Then on 5 May I was rolling the Aliner out of the garage and down a very slight slope on the driveway apron and, while stopping it, my heart started to race. I haven't felt that 200-beat-per-minute thing since I was in my 20's so it was a little unnerving. It went on about 2-3 minutes (guessing because I didn't time it or the pulse rate - much to the disappointment of at least two medical professionals) and didn't go away until I lay down.

Later I went back to prepping and painting a worn place on the roof of the trailer and didn't even mention it to C.J. until late afternoon. She made me call my doctor and I couldn't get an appointment until Monday 8 May (although the appointments person made me promise to go to the ER if I had any chest pain). No problem. We went down to Dog and C.J. got to fly on Saturday. We ran a parachute deployment seminar in Seattle on Sunday. On Monday the doc did an EKG (normal) and took some blood and scheduled me for the stress-echo test on the 19th. Tuesday I substitute-taught at St. George.

By Friday 12 May I was wondering if I was feeling chest pain. It wasn't more than a tightness in my upper left quadrant of my chest but it hadn't gone away. Up to this time I had been thinking it was just from an upper body workout I had done with weights maybe, back on the 3rd, But just to be sure I wasn't wrong, I called Nurseline, a service of my med. ins. and described all this. She advised me to go to an ER right away. I suppose it was good advice, a safe call, anyway.

So I went to the local ER and it's amazing how quick the service is when you say "chest pain". They went through the EKG and the blood test and the questions: no heart attack, be sure to show up for the stress-echo test. Okay, so I guess it really is residual pain from lifting weights after not having done so for a month (but it really doesn't feel like that).

Saturday we took the trailer down to Dog for a work party (I didn't do anything strenuous) and we both got to fly in the afternoon, had a nice campfire with the Dog pilots and families (and dogs), and enjoyed having a bed to sleep in with heat on demand in the morning. The wind was from the wrong direction on Sunday so we drove home. I substituted on Tuesday and had the stress-echo test on Friday.

The stress-echo test is done using, I guess, the same thing they use to look at a baby in the uterus - sonogram doesn't sound right but maybe it is. So they get to watch my heart doing its thing before exercise, then I got to run on a treadmill until my heart got above the 85% of max for my age (220-64=156), but the cardiologist ran me up to 156 and held it for 30 seconds. I guess that was enough stress to get a good second reading. (Sure felt like a lot of stress to gasping me) Anyway, he pronounced my heart to be healthy as can be. Phew, at least he didn't want to do an angiogram! He did say that my EKG showed a very subtle indication that I might have Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (link) which is the presence at certain times of a shortcut for electrical signals from the atria to the ventricles. That probably isn't a problem unless I start having more of these tachycardia episodes.

So that's the story.