AKA:  Ticker Update #2

You can read the beginning of this story here and an update here.

Since this fiasco began, my heart has continued to thump around in my chest, apparently oblivious to the fact that it’s caused me no end of grief and probably countless new charges and line items on my hospital bills which, thankfully, the insurance company gets to shoulder the brunt of.  One has to wonder why your organs don’t have more sympathy to your own plights, especially when they cause it.

On Thursday of last week I finally got the results from both my echo-cardiogram and my Holter EKG monitor that I wore for 24 hours to record my heartbeat.  The echo came back with the following report:  “If you weren’t so fat, we could have gotten a better picture.”  Gee.  Leave it up to a doctor to say something nice, eh?  Actually, the written report said, “Due to the patient’s size, we were unable to obtain a clear picture.”  But I think we all know what was implied here, don’t you?

The Holter’s results were more definitive:  “occasional PVCs”. This does not refer to polyvinyl chloride plastic, as I am more commonly dealing with when I partake in a plumbing project in my basement, but to premature ventricular contractions, a form of heart rhythm aberration.

Normal heartbeats are initiated in the right-hand atrium by something called the SA Node.   This is the “pacemaker” of the healthy heart.   All parts of the heart have the built-in ability to fire an electrical signal to beat their own part, but the SA node is the biggest and fastest, so it usually goes first and causes all the other parts to cascade in order, triggered by the signal from the SA node.  Thus, a normal heartbeat.

In PVC, for some reason, one of the ventricle’s own firing centers goes ahead of the SA node.  This “odd” signal causes the heart to beat backwards for a second, thoroughly confusing the poor thing and making it shake its head around like it just biffed itself on the cupboard door after trying to raise its head to hear what its wife was yelling from the other side of the house.  In essence, it misses a beat entirely, then comes back in with a vengeance on the next one, and resumes the proper course towards the horizon.

Would you like to see my EKG from today and a PVC in it?  Ok, here ya go:

Oh, is that hard to see?  Here’s a closeup of my EKG:  2 normal beats, a PVC, and 2 more normal beats:

They’re one of the most common forms of heart arrhythmia and are usually benign, but of course, I had no idea on mine.  So my doctor scheduled me in for a stress test.

Yup, this is the stereotypical man running on a treadmill with wires suctioncupped to his nipples, except that they are adhesive, not suction, and very tightly on my chest hair, not my poor little nubs.

I did this today at 8am — quite the wakeup!  The nurse informed me that they had to get my heartrate up to a target level, which turned out to be 161 beats/minute, 85% of my max heart rate of 190.  It took me 7 minutes to get there and then I held it for another 3 minutes, running at 4.2mph on a 16% incline.  While this may not sound at all impressive to you folks out there in Jogs-To-Work-ville, it was a heavy breather, and not the good sort, either.

All the while they were taking an EKG and the nurse, a PA, and a resident were watching the progress, both to evaluate the results and in case I were to keel over and assume a horizontal position.

Thankfully, my PVCs decreased as my heart rate went up, and all but disappeared during the highest portion of the test, which is great news.  This is exactly what you want to happen, as it means that the heart’s own pacemaker is overpowering the faulty electrical activity and forcing the regular rhythm, even if the ventricle is still generating the irregular beat, a phenomenon known as overdrive suppression.

In layman’s terms, it means that my heart’s not fucked up.

I have to wait to really call it an “all clear” until my doctor gets the opportunity to review my test results, but that’s probably the case — a benign case of the bumps.  The next task will be to see if it’s worth even bothering to treat them or if it’s simply better to learn to live with them, which I am getting MUCH better at.

But for now, I can live with the knowledge that it looks very positive for me and my ticker.  Three cheers for pumpers that take a licking and keep on ticking.