Diagnosis: Cardiac Arrhythmia
On Thursday, I was diagnosed with a cardiac arrhythmia.
Sounds pretty impressive, doesn't it? After all, it is what killed Elvis (who died when he was one year younger than I am now). But don't panic, I am apparently going to pull through. As it turns out, about 850,000 people a year are hospitalized in the U.S. with this affliction, so I am one of many. As Davey would say, "It'll buff out."
I first noticed it several years ago—I can't even say for sure when (making it more challenging for the doctor to make a firm diagnosis). The best way to describe it is the feeling you get when your heart races—when you get excited over a football game or some good news. You can't catch your breath, and your heart is pounding.
About six weeks ago, I had a pretty tough bike ride. It was the Wednesday night ride, and I decided to hit it a little harder than usual. Over about two hours, my average heart rate was 152 (higher than normal for me), and my max heart rate was 175, only two beats per minute less than my maximum. Even though my average speed doesn't reflect it (17.5mph), my exertion rate was pretty high.
When I got home and went to bed, I noticed that racing feeling in my heart much more, and it concerned me. I was going over in my mind what the cause could be, when I remembered once reading a book on training, and learned that over-training can cause heart palpitations. Relieved, I took a rest day on Thursday, and hoped things would get back to normal. They didn't. I can't say the symptoms got worse, but they didn't get any better either. It got to the point where if I was awake, I was feeling it, in the morning when I woke up, throughout the day at work, and at night when I got in bed.
On one particular night this week, I couldn't sleep. My heart was racing. It was 1:30 in the morning. I checked my pulse, and counted each heart beat. That's when I noticed that every so often, my heart would just stop beating. It might be every third beat, or every seventh or eighth. It only stopped for one beat, then it started up again. But it was creepy, and I was scared.
It seems that we've been hearing a lot about cardiac arrest lately. Of course, the most famous recent victim is Michael Jackson. But apparently it is what killed Billy Mayes too. I learned this week that cardiac arrest is not the same thing as a heart attack. You can have cardiac arrest without having a diseased heart with blocked arteries. That's why healthy guys like Jim Fixx drop dead every once in a while. Last year, my friend Tom Woodson was mowing his lawn. Tom was in his forties. His heart quit. He appeared to be extremely fit (he always reminded me of Tom Selleck), but his heart just decided to stop beating one day. This week, I learned that a friend that I graduated with suffered a massive heart attack. He is the same age as me. He survived the attack, but doctors are unsure of how much damage there is to his heart, or what the ultimate outcome will be.
So with all these people dropping out from heart problems, you can see why it scared me that my heart was only beating when it wanted to. I decided that I would go see my doctor, but he was busy, so I went to the walk in clinic at Saint Francis. As soon as we sat down with the admissions lady, she said, "I need to tell you right now that there is a two and a half hour wait to see a doctor." I almost left, but then I thought, "Dude, you're having a freaking heart attack. You're not waiting two hours for anything!" And you know what? I was right. If you ever want to get to head of the line, use the phrase, "chest pains," or "heart attack." I think we waited five minutes.
They asked me a bunch of questions, took my pulse and blood pressure, and asked if I was a smoker or a drinker. Then they took me to a room, and hooked me up to an EKG. Less than five minutes later, I was with a doctor. He asked me a ton of questions—do you have blackouts, do you have pain in your arms or legs, do you this, do you that, on and on this went.
Then he asked me the million dollar question. And I do mean that it was a million dollar question.
Do you ever exercise?
I said, "no, I don't exercise. But I do ride my bicycle. A lot." He wanted to know what I meant by "a lot." I said, "I ride to work three to five days a week. I ride 35 to 45 miles a day, 175 to 200 miles a week, maybe 5000 miles a year." He asked if I had these heart issues while on the bike, and I told him that I didn't know. If I did, I hadn't ever noticed.
But then I told him that I never get on a bicycle without my heart rate monitor. I'm just kind of a freak that way, I like to know what my heart rate is, how many calories I'm burning, etc. He asked about the data I collect from that. Resting heart rate? Mid-forties. Maximum heart rate? 177. Average heart rate over a sustained ride of two or more hours? 135-155. He was furiously taking copious notes the whole time.
Then he clicked his pen, closed the folder, and said, "you're going to be just fine. You have a benign cardiac arrhythmia. It is fairly common. We could treat it, but you wouldn't like the side effects."
I asked him how he knew it wasn't something more serious. He told me that if I had a diseased heart, or if the arrhythmia was not benign, I would not be able to sustain a heart rate of anything over 90 beats per minute for longer than 10 to 12 minutes. He said, "If you had heart disease, or a more serious problem, you would already be dead by now, from all that bike riding."
They did some blood work, to determine if my electrolyte levels, magnesium and potassium were normal (they were perfect, he said). Then they sent me home. Later, I scheduled a complete physical with my regular doctor.
Now I am not saying that cycling and weight loss are the reasons why this is not a more serious problem. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that if I still weighed 285 and spent most of my down time sitting on this couch, I would still have a benign cardiac arrhythmia. I could be wrong about that—if I hadn't lost weight and spent so much time riding, I might have a bad heart rather than a healthy one, but I don't know. The reason I called it a "million dollar" question is that if not for the cycling, and the weight loss, and the compulsive attention to heart rate, it would have cost a lot more money to find out that there is nothing seriously wrong with me. If the answer to that question had been, "I never get any physical exercise," I suspect I would have been asked to make an appointment with a specialist, and had all kinds of invasive tests done to determine that I wasn't going to have a heart attack. I would have gotten a lecture on health, fitness, weight loss, and diet. It would have cost me a lot of money personally, and it would have cost my insurance plan a lot more than that. A full battery of tests, a heart cath, a dye test, etc., might cost $20-40,000. Heart surgery? $150,000. So the money I've spent on bicycling seems like a bargain in comparison.
Once again, cycling pays off.
Sounds pretty impressive, doesn't it? After all, it is what killed Elvis (who died when he was one year younger than I am now). But don't panic, I am apparently going to pull through. As it turns out, about 850,000 people a year are hospitalized in the U.S. with this affliction, so I am one of many. As Davey would say, "It'll buff out."
I first noticed it several years ago—I can't even say for sure when (making it more challenging for the doctor to make a firm diagnosis). The best way to describe it is the feeling you get when your heart races—when you get excited over a football game or some good news. You can't catch your breath, and your heart is pounding.
About six weeks ago, I had a pretty tough bike ride. It was the Wednesday night ride, and I decided to hit it a little harder than usual. Over about two hours, my average heart rate was 152 (higher than normal for me), and my max heart rate was 175, only two beats per minute less than my maximum. Even though my average speed doesn't reflect it (17.5mph), my exertion rate was pretty high.
When I got home and went to bed, I noticed that racing feeling in my heart much more, and it concerned me. I was going over in my mind what the cause could be, when I remembered once reading a book on training, and learned that over-training can cause heart palpitations. Relieved, I took a rest day on Thursday, and hoped things would get back to normal. They didn't. I can't say the symptoms got worse, but they didn't get any better either. It got to the point where if I was awake, I was feeling it, in the morning when I woke up, throughout the day at work, and at night when I got in bed.
On one particular night this week, I couldn't sleep. My heart was racing. It was 1:30 in the morning. I checked my pulse, and counted each heart beat. That's when I noticed that every so often, my heart would just stop beating. It might be every third beat, or every seventh or eighth. It only stopped for one beat, then it started up again. But it was creepy, and I was scared.
It seems that we've been hearing a lot about cardiac arrest lately. Of course, the most famous recent victim is Michael Jackson. But apparently it is what killed Billy Mayes too. I learned this week that cardiac arrest is not the same thing as a heart attack. You can have cardiac arrest without having a diseased heart with blocked arteries. That's why healthy guys like Jim Fixx drop dead every once in a while. Last year, my friend Tom Woodson was mowing his lawn. Tom was in his forties. His heart quit. He appeared to be extremely fit (he always reminded me of Tom Selleck), but his heart just decided to stop beating one day. This week, I learned that a friend that I graduated with suffered a massive heart attack. He is the same age as me. He survived the attack, but doctors are unsure of how much damage there is to his heart, or what the ultimate outcome will be.
So with all these people dropping out from heart problems, you can see why it scared me that my heart was only beating when it wanted to. I decided that I would go see my doctor, but he was busy, so I went to the walk in clinic at Saint Francis. As soon as we sat down with the admissions lady, she said, "I need to tell you right now that there is a two and a half hour wait to see a doctor." I almost left, but then I thought, "Dude, you're having a freaking heart attack. You're not waiting two hours for anything!" And you know what? I was right. If you ever want to get to head of the line, use the phrase, "chest pains," or "heart attack." I think we waited five minutes.
They asked me a bunch of questions, took my pulse and blood pressure, and asked if I was a smoker or a drinker. Then they took me to a room, and hooked me up to an EKG. Less than five minutes later, I was with a doctor. He asked me a ton of questions—do you have blackouts, do you have pain in your arms or legs, do you this, do you that, on and on this went.
Then he asked me the million dollar question. And I do mean that it was a million dollar question.
Do you ever exercise?
I said, "no, I don't exercise. But I do ride my bicycle. A lot." He wanted to know what I meant by "a lot." I said, "I ride to work three to five days a week. I ride 35 to 45 miles a day, 175 to 200 miles a week, maybe 5000 miles a year." He asked if I had these heart issues while on the bike, and I told him that I didn't know. If I did, I hadn't ever noticed.
But then I told him that I never get on a bicycle without my heart rate monitor. I'm just kind of a freak that way, I like to know what my heart rate is, how many calories I'm burning, etc. He asked about the data I collect from that. Resting heart rate? Mid-forties. Maximum heart rate? 177. Average heart rate over a sustained ride of two or more hours? 135-155. He was furiously taking copious notes the whole time.
Then he clicked his pen, closed the folder, and said, "you're going to be just fine. You have a benign cardiac arrhythmia. It is fairly common. We could treat it, but you wouldn't like the side effects."
I asked him how he knew it wasn't something more serious. He told me that if I had a diseased heart, or if the arrhythmia was not benign, I would not be able to sustain a heart rate of anything over 90 beats per minute for longer than 10 to 12 minutes. He said, "If you had heart disease, or a more serious problem, you would already be dead by now, from all that bike riding."
They did some blood work, to determine if my electrolyte levels, magnesium and potassium were normal (they were perfect, he said). Then they sent me home. Later, I scheduled a complete physical with my regular doctor.
Now I am not saying that cycling and weight loss are the reasons why this is not a more serious problem. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that if I still weighed 285 and spent most of my down time sitting on this couch, I would still have a benign cardiac arrhythmia. I could be wrong about that—if I hadn't lost weight and spent so much time riding, I might have a bad heart rather than a healthy one, but I don't know. The reason I called it a "million dollar" question is that if not for the cycling, and the weight loss, and the compulsive attention to heart rate, it would have cost a lot more money to find out that there is nothing seriously wrong with me. If the answer to that question had been, "I never get any physical exercise," I suspect I would have been asked to make an appointment with a specialist, and had all kinds of invasive tests done to determine that I wasn't going to have a heart attack. I would have gotten a lecture on health, fitness, weight loss, and diet. It would have cost me a lot of money personally, and it would have cost my insurance plan a lot more than that. A full battery of tests, a heart cath, a dye test, etc., might cost $20-40,000. Heart surgery? $150,000. So the money I've spent on bicycling seems like a bargain in comparison.
Once again, cycling pays off.
I love your blogs. They have substance and are always well written! Glad you are okay!
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Thank you, Shawna! That's very nice of you to say.
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Man, I'm glad it's not serious, but don't take anything for granted. Those hearts are important pieces of equipment that we can't live without!
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