Not a great day

It hasn't been what I would call a brilliant day.

Yesterday I wrote about not over reacting to the current issues with my heart, but this is my blog and I will cry if I want to.

Yesterday I said I was given the okay to do some gentle training, so that is what I did today. I actually jumped on the trainer because it allows you to keep very precise control over the intensity, plus if I wasn't feeling good I could simply stop and get off.

The session wasn't a great one. It wasn't that I suddenly felt worse than I have for the last few weeks, but now I was hyper sensitive to it. Whereas previously I was telling myself it was probably nothing, this morning I knew that wasn't true. That makes it very hard to ignore. As a result the session wasn't great.

That general feeling of hypersensitivity to the issue persisted through the day. Whereas before I wasn't feeling great but wasn't really keeping tabs on it. today I was making a point of tracking when I was having 'episodes' so that I would have more useful data to give Dr Gary when I saw him next.

The result of keeping track of my heart more meant that I was noticing just how often it was going strange (a lot). In the end I had a chat to Gary and he asked me to head to emergency at the nearest hospital to get an ECG and just check that everything was okay. he wasn't concerned that I was in any danger, but he just wanted to get the reassurance.

Let me tell you that sitting in Emergency wasn't how I was planning on spending my Saturday evening.

In hospital they gave me some blood tests and took several ECGs. Everyone agreed that I have a very unusual ECG and in the end they came back with a diagnosis of Ventricular Bigeminy. I will let you Google that one at your leisure.

Reading about Ventricular Bigeminy it rings true of what I am feeling with my heart beat. Having that diagnosis is kind of good in some ways but also not particularly helpful in others. Bigeminy and similar conditions are not uncommon and also not particularly dangerous. They typically wouldn't treat it unless it was causing a person problems, like say they were trying to do an Ironman Triathlon quickly. Knowing it isn't dangerous is a great weight off my mind.

If the condition is causing problems and a person wants to treat it then the usual course of action is to put that person on Beta Blockers. This would normally bring the condition under control but it also makes it very difficult to do intense exercise since it reduces your maximum heart rate. Not an ideal solution.

The second thing that people can do is ablation, which is a form of 'mild' heart surgery. To be honest I am not familiar with the procedure yet, but it involves general anesthetic and them burning out the areas that are causing the errant signals to the heart via a catheter. It is fairly common surgery, but as with any surgery it is not risk free or a full proof solution. I would be wanting a much better understanding of the risks before considering it.

So really the outcome of today is that I have a reasonably confirmed diagnosis for a heart conditions that doesn't usually cause problems and isn't really dangerous, but when it cause problems, doesn't really have a great solution.

Knowing that the conditions is not particularly dangerous raises the usual thoughts of 'well perhaps I should just be sucking it up and training with it', 'perhaps I am making this into a much bigger deal than it is'. But the reality is that I know what I am feeling and I know that the way I am currently feeling I can't effectively train and I definitely couldn't race properly.

That forces consideration of the cardiologist's final suggestion today.

'I know you don't want to hear this, but would you consider simply not training? That would probably fix the symptoms'.'

Not a great day.