Interesting Day

Soooo....

Today has been an interesting day.

I have been writing for a few weeks now about not feeling quite right. Feeling out of rhythm. Stuff like that. What has been underlying all that has been my heart. If I had to describe it I would say that my heart has been feeling tired. Nice and vague I know, but that about covers it. Exercise has been hard. Running has been slow, swimming feels like I am drowning, riding feels like I can't breathe, I get dizzy when I stand up all the time, a couple of times I have felt like I might faint. Lots of things haven't been right.

It is just the lack of fitness I have been telling myself. Or the fact that I was getting over a cold. It will come good, just give it a bit of time. Don't be a hypochondriac. Don't over react. Just keep working...

I have kept it to myself mostly. Strange isn't it. I haven't told the support network around me. I only told my wife recently. All part of not overreacting I guess. When I have told them, they have given me the predictable (and sensible) advice. Go and see the Doctor. Advice which I dutifully ignored. Until today.

Today I went and saw the Doctor.

Well to be honest, we sort of saw each other. You see I train with my Doctor. Regular readers will have heard me talk about Dr Gary Couanis before, he is my Doctor. He also happens to be a member of my swim squad, a regular run partner and an all around great guy. I consider him a mate as well as my GP.

I was at the pool this morning for the usual Friday morning Swim Smooth session. As has been the norm for the past few weeks I wasn't feeling good in the pool. The swimming itself felt okay, but I was just not comfortable, constantly feeling like I wasn't getting enough air. We had just finished the warm up and my heart was pounding. In fact it was pounding kind of strange, two very pronounced thumps. Thump...thump. I grabbed Gary's hand and got him to feel my heart beat.

'Is that normal?' I asked.
His answer was of course, 'No'.
Actually he said 'No, you are having atrial fibrillation', but I had no idea what that meant
'What does that mean?'
'It means you need to get out of the pool and come and see me later'

Which is what I did.

He also said a few other scary things about keeping an eye on the fibrillation and going to a hospital if it didn't stop, but it calmed down pretty quickly and so all that wasn't necessary.

Oh yeah before I go on, just a quick side note. I would never usually ask a medical professional for free medical advice during training. I know lots of physios, doctors etc and I know they hate that sort of request from friends and acquaintances. The only reason I did today was because it seemed a little serious and I get along with Gary pretty well. I apologised a lot afterwards though.

Anyway back to it.

I saw Gary a couple of hours ago and he ran me through Atrial Fibrillation (here is a good description Atrial Fibrillation). It all sounded kind of familiar because I had a similar issue back in 2015. Anyone reading this blog really long term might remember that I pulled out of the Bintan 70.3 in 2015 because my heart was feeling strange. I had a bit of an erratic heart beat that was occasionally causing me symptoms. At the time I had lots of tests done and they found nothing wrong with my heart. I cut out caffeine and a few other things but none of it seemed to make a difference. I was still getting occasional symptoms, but they couldn't really ID a problem. Gary explained Atrial Fibrillation back then too. At the time he suggested cutting out one of my Asthma medications which was a stimulant. I did that and the problem seemed to go away. Fixed, get back to racing. Which I did.

Until today.

If you want to do something scary, Google studies on Atrial Fibrillation in long term endurance athletes. Hmmm.... On the other hand perhaps don't.

So what now?

Well some testing first. As is often the way with these things the way forward can't really be determined until the cause has a bit more resolution.

Atrial Fibrillation is one of those things that can just happen. it is actually reasonably common. However, when it 'just happens' it usually happens to somebody over 60, or a smoker, or a heavy drinker, or somebody very overweight etc. It is rarer in young(ish) fit people. However, it also seems to 'just happen' to long term endurance athletes based on the aforementioned Google articles. This is due to changes that occur to their heart from the strain they put themselves under. Besides 'just happening' though according to Dr Gary there can also be some causes, such as anemia and hyperthyroidism. These causes are the things that I have had blood tests to check on.

The results of those tests will give us some idea of the way forward. If there is a cause, that is great because we can treat that cause. If it is 'just happening' then there are potential treatment options there too, although they aren't as good.

If the cause isn't obvious and the treatment options aren't appealing, what then? Well I have gone to a lot of effort to not overreact thus far, so I am not going to start doing that now. If we get to the point that the solution isn't obvious and the options aren't good, well I will cross that bridge then.

Between now and then I will be doing some very low intensity exercise. Don't worry, I have a Doctor's note.