Heart Palpitations

Published 2007-01-08 at 22:17:06Z under biographical

Long-time readers may recall a mention several years ago about heart
palpitations that occasionally bothered me. I recently saw another doctor about
them, but no new news.

About 10 years ago, I started getting this hiccup or flutter sensation in my
heart. More specifically, it felt like one beat was "odd" and the beat
following it was very pronounced. Either there was a double-beat in there
(making the "odd" beat), or maybe the "odd" beat just failed to beat properly
or completely. At the time, I was noticing this maybe once a week or so.

I saw a doctor straight away, and they did an ECG and saw nothing out of the
ordinary. Blood tests showed normal thyroid function. Since I wasn't
experiencing any real discomfort, pain, shortness of breath, etc., he basically
said it wasn't likely to be a danger and to come back if the symptoms changed.

So a few months ago, I realized that these things were happening now on the
order of once a day or so. And one "event" lasted twice as long as it normally
does. This prompted me to see another doctor about it. They listened, asked
more questions than I remembered the last doctor asking, and set me up with a
24-hour Holter monitor to try and catch it in the act. They also ordered more
blood tests.

So for the whole day I had the monitor on, I didn't notice a single event. And
then I went on vacation to San Antonio and still didn't notice any events. The
entire time I was on vacation I can't remember it happening even once. In the
last week, it's happened about once a day again. Figures.

So today I saw the doctors again to get the results. Everything looks clean.
Heart rate, blood pressure, blood tests and Holter monitor results were all
stellar. As far as they could see, I'm in perfect health. The next step would
have been to send me to a cardiologist, at a cost of $10-20k. Given that my
symptoms weren't very significant, they didn't think the additional testing was
worth it. I agreed.

It's a little frustrating that they couldn't catch it in the act, but I'm not
as worried about it as I was before.

π
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