Happy New Year! Yes, yes, it is late to offer these greetings but I haven't posted since last year. Per usual, no news is good news and that still turns out to be the case.
We have been in AZ since the second week of December and are enjoying the absence of snow and cold and inversions. Relatively speaking, it is a cold winter here--it froze this morning and the high will only be in the mid-50s--but who's complaining? The sun is out and it is distinctly better than N Utah. The cooler weather (today 15 degrees F below average) here actually means improved air since it is often accompanied by rain and wind, so that has made us additionally happy. We are reliably informed that Utah is having a great snow year which often means to them, as well, the relative absence of inversions and the associated bad air. Still, better to be here than falling on the ice up there.
I arrived here with an upper respiratory infection that took a number of weeks to resolve. I treated it only with OTC nostrums and rode it out. (Long ago, I should have invested in Kimberly-Clark or whomever else it is who makes Kleenex.) Whilst that infection bordered on bronchitis, it never seemed to quite go that far. I was pleased when my immune system apparently rose to the occasion. I have seen similar infections return for a second blast--usually not as severe as the first--and that one did. It arrived a few days after we returned from a week-long Jazz Cruise in the Caribbean after sucking airplane air. Then, it did not seem to be responsive to Vicks Vapo-Rub, etc and I could feel my lungs beginning to get involved. I had prepared for such an eventuality by having my regular doc prescribe a dose of Azithromycin in which the complete course is 5 days. (I carry that with me during travel, especially where there are sanitation concerns, eg, Mexico. That did the trick and I was healthy again in 10 days and have remained so since.
I acquired an Apple Watch (Series 4) and it is a wonder, but also a mixed blessing. It continuously reads heart rate which is important to me to see what my twice-ablated ticker is up to. (Spoiler: not too much!) Right now, sitting here, I am at 57 bpm. And according to the electro-phys guys that is fabulous. The mixed blessing part comes with another watch feature: it also does a 30-sec ECG--obviously 1 lead only. From what I have read one should not diagnose from this output because it produces about 20% A-fib false positives. I have had NO A-fib indications. But I am often out of sinus rhythm and this I don't know about. There are lots of people who get along just fine without being in sinus rhythm but that is obviously the preferred state.
Does the watch err on the side of concluding the absence of sinus rhythm appropriately, or are there signal detection problems there as well? Of course there are! The more precise question is: am I seeing signals or noise? And, how long do I tolerate seeing this outcome before I take some action. (At present I am getting this reading about 50% of the time. The rest of the time I am in sinus) Well, here is what I think.
Since we are going back to UT in 30 days or so, I will wait. The aforementioned rhythm stuff is asymptomatic, it does not bother me. I am not overly light-headed. I am able to work out and I feel 80-yrs strong. I am still limited in walking because of all my other problems. My spring meetings with all my docs occur shortly after our return and a complete ECG is the first thing the rhythm guys do. Answers are forthcoming. No worries.
I have had one occasion of high hr that was about 122 bpm. It came while watching a particularly suspenseful television program a few weeks ago and has not repeated. It resolved on its own in a minute or so. If that frequency increases I will have to act more quickly. But for now: NOT.
