Take Care Of Your Heart; Mine Beats In F#
Or so it would appear assuming I interpreted the screen of the echocardiogram correctly.
There are any number of reasons why I haven't posted in a while, including general business and my predictable ennui, but the most prevalent is that I've been trying to sort out, and freaking out about, some potential medical issues.
I should say up front that I am, in all likelihood, fine, at least for some strong if not absolute value of "fine".
A week ago (Sunday the 12th) I pushed myself pretty hard at the gym and overdid the reintroduction of weightlifting into my routine; as a result, I wasn't feeling so hot and actually cut the whole thing short. A couple of hours later, making dinner, I idly put my hand on my chest and realized that my heartbeat was kind of fast - I timed it and it came out to 110 bpm, which is fine if you're, say, walking briskly, but pretty high if you're standing in front of a stove. I sat down and my heart rate dropped almost instantly to about 72. This pattern more or less stayed constant for the rest of the week - when sitting, my heart was at 65-75 bpm, which is relatively healthy (especially considering that I've just lost a lot of weight and am still relatively overweight), but if I stood up it rapidly jumped to something in the 90-110 range (which is at the high end of "normal" resting rate, pushing into "maybe be concerned"). I understood that the heart might work a little harder when standing, but the disparity between postures, and the fact that standing up often put me just over the "healthy" line, had me worried, which worry continued to escalate as the symptoms failed to decrease.
Relevant at this point, as an insight into my mood, is my letting you know that my mother died at 49 of heart failure; autopsy revealed an enlarged heart (among other things).
I saw a physician on Wednesday, who confirmed that my pulse did indeed jump when I stood, but my blood pressure was better than average, my EKG came back normal, and her stethoscope-driven observations indicated an averagely healthy heart of normal size. They took some blood (no results yet) and she prescribed me the echocardiogram, which is basically an EKG-plus-ultrasound of my heart. I had the echocardiogram on Friday; it took almost an hour, as a cute but all-business technician repeatedly smeared contact gel on her instrument and waved it around on my chest, freezing particular moments for later study by a cardiologist. I also don't have the results on this test, and she seemed like the sort of person who would punt if I asked her general impression. The display appeared to be saying, among lots of stuff that I didn't understand, that my heartbeat was pitched at F#2, but I think that seems high, given that I can sing F#2 (which is, for reference, the second fret of a guitar's low E-string).
So I await results. My (new) doctor, who was very nice, said she thought there wasn't anything wrong with me, maybe I was a little dehydrated, and should resume working out, so I went again yesterday (Saturday the 18th). Prior to that, I'd experienced a significant reduction in the gap between my standing and sitting rates, and my mood eased considerably. Now more than 24 hours after working out again (much more mildly than the previous time) the gap has reestablished itself. Maybe I'm not drinking enough water, or maybe this is something about my physiology I wasn't previously aware of. I'm probably fine. But as the length of this post indicates, I'm really fucking preoccupied and at this point I'm well into the territory where I psych myself out. I've taken my pulse probably 200 times in the past week, and I swear it speeds up the moment I start watching the second-hand of my watch. I don't feel anything wrong, but that has been little comfort to me.
Again, I'm intellectually sure that I'm fine, and I hope test results this week will provide additional clarity - or at least the kind of "we don't know what the deal is but it's nothing to worry about" so characteristic of the medical profession, which previously saw me diagnosed with a mild and intermittent case of prostatitis ("which could actually be any number of things, none of them cause for concern"). My emotional state surely doesn't help; on Monday I had the day off but needed to go to the office anyway; I took the train there and had intended to walk back (a walk I usually take both ways every day) but called it off after a block, when I checked my pulse, convinced myself that it was too fast, and nearly broke down in tears, momentarily convinced that I was, contrary to all physical sensations (other than that damned beat in my wrist), about to collapse on the street.
It's notable that this is the first time I can recall being afraid of death. That it was (99.99999999% certainty) over nothing is worth something, although I didn't do my ever hateful self-esteem any favors with this turn for the melodramatic. I did realize some things in that moment, most of which I still think are true, and I suppose I'm grateful for shedding a little more clarity on those aspects of my feelings which I've yet to untangle. The unhealthy project of overanalyzing myself reached something of an impasse a few years ago, so even the smallest advances become noteworthy. Plus for a long time I've wavered between being proud and being afraid of my usual indifference towards my own mortality; having a moment of clear rejection, an absolute conviction that at least at that moment on State Street on October 13th I did not want to die, is a nice balance for the ledger books, and probably something worth keeping in mind.
There are any number of reasons why I haven't posted in a while, including general business and my predictable ennui, but the most prevalent is that I've been trying to sort out, and freaking out about, some potential medical issues.
I should say up front that I am, in all likelihood, fine, at least for some strong if not absolute value of "fine".
A week ago (Sunday the 12th) I pushed myself pretty hard at the gym and overdid the reintroduction of weightlifting into my routine; as a result, I wasn't feeling so hot and actually cut the whole thing short. A couple of hours later, making dinner, I idly put my hand on my chest and realized that my heartbeat was kind of fast - I timed it and it came out to 110 bpm, which is fine if you're, say, walking briskly, but pretty high if you're standing in front of a stove. I sat down and my heart rate dropped almost instantly to about 72. This pattern more or less stayed constant for the rest of the week - when sitting, my heart was at 65-75 bpm, which is relatively healthy (especially considering that I've just lost a lot of weight and am still relatively overweight), but if I stood up it rapidly jumped to something in the 90-110 range (which is at the high end of "normal" resting rate, pushing into "maybe be concerned"). I understood that the heart might work a little harder when standing, but the disparity between postures, and the fact that standing up often put me just over the "healthy" line, had me worried, which worry continued to escalate as the symptoms failed to decrease.
Relevant at this point, as an insight into my mood, is my letting you know that my mother died at 49 of heart failure; autopsy revealed an enlarged heart (among other things).
I saw a physician on Wednesday, who confirmed that my pulse did indeed jump when I stood, but my blood pressure was better than average, my EKG came back normal, and her stethoscope-driven observations indicated an averagely healthy heart of normal size. They took some blood (no results yet) and she prescribed me the echocardiogram, which is basically an EKG-plus-ultrasound of my heart. I had the echocardiogram on Friday; it took almost an hour, as a cute but all-business technician repeatedly smeared contact gel on her instrument and waved it around on my chest, freezing particular moments for later study by a cardiologist. I also don't have the results on this test, and she seemed like the sort of person who would punt if I asked her general impression. The display appeared to be saying, among lots of stuff that I didn't understand, that my heartbeat was pitched at F#2, but I think that seems high, given that I can sing F#2 (which is, for reference, the second fret of a guitar's low E-string).
So I await results. My (new) doctor, who was very nice, said she thought there wasn't anything wrong with me, maybe I was a little dehydrated, and should resume working out, so I went again yesterday (Saturday the 18th). Prior to that, I'd experienced a significant reduction in the gap between my standing and sitting rates, and my mood eased considerably. Now more than 24 hours after working out again (much more mildly than the previous time) the gap has reestablished itself. Maybe I'm not drinking enough water, or maybe this is something about my physiology I wasn't previously aware of. I'm probably fine. But as the length of this post indicates, I'm really fucking preoccupied and at this point I'm well into the territory where I psych myself out. I've taken my pulse probably 200 times in the past week, and I swear it speeds up the moment I start watching the second-hand of my watch. I don't feel anything wrong, but that has been little comfort to me.
Again, I'm intellectually sure that I'm fine, and I hope test results this week will provide additional clarity - or at least the kind of "we don't know what the deal is but it's nothing to worry about" so characteristic of the medical profession, which previously saw me diagnosed with a mild and intermittent case of prostatitis ("which could actually be any number of things, none of them cause for concern"). My emotional state surely doesn't help; on Monday I had the day off but needed to go to the office anyway; I took the train there and had intended to walk back (a walk I usually take both ways every day) but called it off after a block, when I checked my pulse, convinced myself that it was too fast, and nearly broke down in tears, momentarily convinced that I was, contrary to all physical sensations (other than that damned beat in my wrist), about to collapse on the street.
It's notable that this is the first time I can recall being afraid of death. That it was (99.99999999% certainty) over nothing is worth something, although I didn't do my ever hateful self-esteem any favors with this turn for the melodramatic. I did realize some things in that moment, most of which I still think are true, and I suppose I'm grateful for shedding a little more clarity on those aspects of my feelings which I've yet to untangle. The unhealthy project of overanalyzing myself reached something of an impasse a few years ago, so even the smallest advances become noteworthy. Plus for a long time I've wavered between being proud and being afraid of my usual indifference towards my own mortality; having a moment of clear rejection, an absolute conviction that at least at that moment on State Street on October 13th I did not want to die, is a nice balance for the ledger books, and probably something worth keeping in mind.
Labels: Personal
posted by medrawt at
23:22
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