Stressful

Following on from the genetic testing results I got last week I got a bit more heart health information today.

Today's information came in the form of an exercise stress test. There was no particular prompt for this latest test other than schedule. It is about 12 months since I had my ablation and so this stress test was a bit of a regularly scheduled check up.

All up I think it went okay. A little painful for sure, but no big concerns.

The protocol that my cardiologist's clinic uses is designed to test you to exhaustion quite quickly, so as you can imagine it gets tough pretty fast. The test starts out at a comfy walking pace, however, the complication is that you are on a treadmill set to an incline of 10 degrees. From there the treadmill increases speed and inclination every 3 minutes. The first few steps remain at walking pace, but by 16 degrees I was up to jogging pace. As you can imagine the heart starts to work pretty solidly from there.

For the test today I made it to 20 degrees, which you do at a slow run. I think the last time I did one of these stress tests I got to 18 degrees, so I guess today was a PB of sorts, not that that is particularly important.

Over the test my heart rate got into the high 150s, so not quite as high as I would have liked. Given that it was a test it would have been nice to really push the heart rate into the upper reaches to see how it went. I elected to stop the test at the 20 degrees step because I felt like I was working hard and I figured that I had done enough, however, in hindsight it would have been good to go a bit longer. To be honest though, I am not sure how much more running up a 20 degree slope I had in me, the heart may not have been up to its limit, but I think my legs were getting close. It is not like I have put them through a lot of running of late.

Despite the intensity perhaps not getting as high as I would have liked, the test seems to have gone okay though. I won't get the results until I see Dr Stobie, however, the attending Dr said he didn't see anything that concerned him, some ectopic beats, but nothing worrying, so I am taking that as a good sign. I am hoping that this test combined with my non-positive genetic testing might be pointing towards some positive signs.

Time will tell obviously, but so far so good.