No It's Not Valentine's Day Again

This past week I had my own drama in the cardiologist’s office. This happened as I was getting an overdue echocardiogram and nuclear stress test.  The echo went fine and my arteries were clear and I said to myself well Jack you don’t need plavix.  There was no left ventricular hypertrophy as I once thought but there still were the atrial fibrillation episodes that would hit me unexpectedly from time to time. I had given some credence to the notion that too much caffeine was the culprit but this day I had had no coffee that morning. Of course that had me thinking I needn’t pay any attention to my intake of it in the future. I dismissed that thought rather quickly.  Never however were these episodes exercised induced, but once I was in A-Fib I had to be in repose to quiet my beating heart. 

As I stepped on the treadmill hooked up like Steve Austin, I saw the monitors jump as my HR read at one point 150. Clearly way beyond my resting rate of 54.  My cardiologist was aghast as to what was happening as finally he was able to document for himself just what my atrial fibrillation looked like. He almost started to stammer as to what my recourse might be; including coumadin, another catheter ablation or what we finally agreed on was my suggestion of just doubling my bystolic from 5mg to 10mg.  In the end he said to call him in 5 months. What’s a cardiologist to do with an irregular heartbeat on a man aged 60 who does not have high blood pressure or diabetes or clogged arteries? Not much just wait and see. And that’s just what I will do. I did notice one thing however my HR spikes were much lower than it was a year ago and I attributed that to my spin classes. More to come on this as it happens.