News

It has been a very long time since I wrote about my health, heart and generally how my body was going, basically there hasn't been much to talk about. However, I had my periodic appointment with Dr Stobie my Cardiologist today, so I thought it might be a good time for an update.

My appointment today wasn't driven by any particular heart issue or anything, but rather was a 6 monthly catch up that I have been having for the last 18 months or so. The short version is that it is looking all good.

The last bit of heart related data that we had was my cardiac MRI that was done a few months ago. The feedback from the MRI was that things were looking good. The heart had shrunk a bit, still a bit big, but smaller than it had been (about 6mm bigger than normal). The ejection fraction was still a bit low, but that is apparently not unusual for athletes. As Dr Stobie tells it, athlete's hearts can be a bit lazy at rest, so the ejection fraction is often a bit low, the heart sorts itself out when it gets going, but that is pretty hard to look at. The upshot from the MRI was, don't return to crazy training, but things were looking good.

Today's appointment followed on from that MRI, and all good was probably the general theme. Actually all good is probably doing the appointment today a little injustice. Dr Stobie is pretty satisfied with how things are progressing so the outcome of the appointment today was a bit more fundamental than All Good (for me anyway). The outcome certainly was that everything is looking good, but more importantly than that, if everything continues to be looking good then Dr Stobie considers my risk to have lowered. Lowered to the point where he isn't that worried. This means that I can probably consider things to be pretty okay longer term. Win.

Does that mean a return to Ironman? Hell no. But it does mean that things have improved and stabilised and I am okay to keep doing what I have been.

From here there are still a few steps to go. I will have another stress test (ECG on a treadmill) in April next year, if that comes up clear then we can probably relax a little and not see each other for a year or so. If things are still okay at our appointment in 2020, then Dr Stobie is happy for me to get on with living life without him, but obviously keeping an eye on stuff.

And for me, that is pretty cool news.