Drove south to SLC on Monday to do some shopping and an appointment with the rhythm doc yesterday. You may recall that his office scheduled an appointment because the heart failure clinic put me on a new beta blocker. The latter move was ostensibly to cut down on the number of pre-ventricular contractions (PVCs) that they heard and then saw on my EKG and my 24-hr Holter study. As a sidebar they also did a sonogram and showed that my heart's ejection fraction was 50% which is (barely) in the normal range but way above what it was during my heart failure of 2015. Otherwise I was not to see the rhythm doc for a year.
Good news: the rhythm doc's EKG showed no PVCs! I don't know if this is the result of the beta blocker (Metoprolol). But the rhythm doc wants me to stay on it. If it is such a result, score one for the heart failure clinic and I take back what I said in my last couple posts about their assertiveness. (I cannot perceive these PVCs.) The doc also said that the Holter turned up no instances of A-Fib.
I also shared with him that my rate of palpitation episodes is every couple of weeks and that they are related to exertion and occasionally other excitement (e.g., I had one after watching a tense movie. Go figure.) Further, I told him of my last episode beause it seemed a little different. To wit:
On the recumbant bicycle at the gym on Monday morning, I increased the resistance during my ride at one point. I had been doing 5 min (of the 30 min) of this increased resistance with no side effects for several sessions. I went for 10 min. Toward the end of this period I felt a bump in my chest as my heart did something. I looked at my oximeter and my heart had spiked at 139 bpm, but instead of staying there for several minutes it came back down to the 90s and then the upper 80s within seconds. This was the quickest resolution that I had seen. During this episode I kept cycling, albeit at the lower resistance and somewhat more slowly, with no further effect. One should also note that this was the 4th workout in 8 days--an attempt to catch up a little given the time away in AZ.
I mentioned this to the rhythm doc and asked whether these episodes might get "better" meaning shorter and less frequent and he said that was possible. This was excellent news as I was laboring under the impression that that wonky circuit would be there forever. Could this also be an ancillary effect of the Metoprolol? One hopes.
So, I am newly energized.
Happy 4th of July!
