Can you say Supraventricular Tachycardia?

In a previous post I shared my growing frustration with my heart. I am not referring to romance, nor am I dreaming up titles for a country western song. To recap, every once in a while my heart rate goes really high. I notice it most often while running, but sometimes it happens on the bike. Never during normal activity. Right after that last post I went to my GP. He insisted there is nothing wrong with me, but since, in his words, "This is the third time I have complained about it" he decided it was time to refer me to a cardiologist.

Talk about luck. I keep hearing stories about doctors who do not understand the active lifestyle, whose advice is often to slow down and just accept the fact you are getting old. This cardiologist was a serious runner and understood completely what I was describing because he had it himself.

Diagnosis is not a 100% sure thing. As is so often the case we treat what we think is most likely going on, and if things don't improve we move on down the list of possibilities. What makes supra whatchamacallit -- SVT -- hard to diagnose it it only happens on rare occasions. Naturally the good Doc ran an EKG during my examination, and it looked perfectly normal. 

This is when I got the first good news. A company named AliveCor makes a portable EKG device called Kardia that connects to your smartphone with Bluetooth. The Doc said to carry it with me on every run and bike, and when I have an episode, pull over and record. I then mail him the file and he can confirm the diagnosis. I paid a little extra for a nice carrying case. The whole thing weights about 50 cents.

 

Then I got the second piece of good news. I have high blood pressure. Nothing much but given my family history I need to take reasonable precautions. The cardiologist saw that I was taking a calcium channel blocker, and one treatment of SVT is a similar but different medication. So we switched. If it works, I will never have another episode of SVT. Which means I will never get to use my new toy. If it does not work, there is a simple surgical procedure.

Naturally the next day after I started the new meds I felt like superman. Amazing what a little confidence boost can do.