Watching and waiting...

At long last, I've heard back from my cardiologist. A week late is much better than never. Last week when I took the Holter monitor in, the tech who read it reported to me that he didn't see anything crazy, which I took to mean not too many critical values. Longest pause between heart beats was 2.16 sec. The cardiologist said we can live with that. I did have one period of low rate at 4 am one morning where the HR was at 37. Take 60 sec (1 min), divide by 2 sec and you get 30 beats per minute. A beat every other second means a 2 sec pause. So this is where the pausing was seen. He was not too concerned about that either.(He recalled an emergency room case where the patient had two periods of absence of HR, one of 10 sec and one of 20 sec and was asymptomatic of it!) What this means is that discontinuing the attenolol was the right thing to do. Its absence has led to the absence of longer pausing in my heart beats.

The bps that I have been worried about--elevated as much as 150/95--actually just crack the threshold now of hypertension. Definitions of hypertension have tended to wander about as much as what is on the food pyramid. I am to keep recording these and discuss with my primary guy. We may or may not go back on the lisonopril at that time. (My earlier dose was a half of a 20 mg tablet, daily.) I think the cardio guy thinks that my body may still be adjusting to the new reality of no beta blocker, so more time free of heart meds will be good to see whether I am symptomatic in any other way. Again today, when the nurse took my bp in the office, it was like 110/71. I could live a long time with that! So there is some disconnect between what is seen when I am up and about, and what is seen after I have been sleeping. This data, too, needs to figure into lisonopril usage. (HR during this measurement was 115.)

I am getting a little pre-syncope, which is probably orthostatic but I can usually control it by moving my head down, or breathing rapidly for a moment. It is not happening when I am active. These are not daily, more like weekly. I am to track those events.

The other half is what is happening in the upper chambers. There there were instances of SVT--which stands for supra-ventricular tachycardia--but the longest one was for just more than a minute. And, moreover, these were not all that speedy, for example, less than 130 bpm. And it wasn't clear that there were a great many of these. He said I can also live with this. Again, I am not sure when or if I feel these instances, so I appear to be asymptomatic. If I do feel them, I am to take my pulse (like I can do that reliably). Even get a bp measure at that time. And if they continue seek help.

So no ablation at this time. No pacemaker at this time. I'm happy. I'll just have to see whether I can progress to feeling less fatigued by doing some walking and see whether I can improve the condition my condition is in that way.