Cardiologist Appointment - December 10th

On December 10th I had an appointment with a cardiologist at the rapid assessment clinic regarding the issues with tachycardia/high heart rate.

Fortunately, this appointment was at the local hospital so I did not need to make the hour drive up to the hospital in Hamilton. This saved a lot of time and discomfort.

Upon arrival, I had to register at the admission desk (even though I was not being admitted to the hospital). Aside from an ID bracelet, I also got a bright yellow bracelet; I am officially a fall risk now. Thanks a lot fixator. It became obvious, both in talking to the lady at admission and crutching to the cardiologists office, how completely abnormal having and external fixator is. I got so many stares... The lady at admission was very curious about it, and the cardiologist himself had quite a few questions about it.

Before seeing the cardiologist I had an electrocardiogram (ECG) to check the rhythm and rate of my heart. I had already had several of those during the latest hospital admission, so I knew what to expect. At least this time I had my bra on...

After that my mum came back into the room (I had kicked her out of the room during the ECG, just to be clear. Having a doctor see my boobs in the hospital two weeks earlier was bad enough without my own mother seeing my boobs) and we waited for a bit until the cardiologist came in. The cardiologist was really friendly and professional. He also wore worn out doc martins that looked slightly out of place with his dress shirt and pants and stethoscope. He asked a lot of questions - family history, personal health history, medications, how I was feeling, etc., etc., Then he took some time to thoroughly listen to my heart with his stethoscope. After that he looked at my ECG and stated what we had already heard during my hospital admission: my heart rhythm is normal but fast. He believes that it is likely related to the major surgery I had, the physical trauma of having an external fixator, being slightly anemic, and the pain medication I am on. This is in contrast to what the doctors said while I was in the hospital. Not once did they mention the trauma of the fixator or the surgery itself. They also told us that the tachycardia couldn't have been caused by my pain medication, which would have caused bradycardia, or slow heart rate, instead. But the cardiologist was confident that all the things I just mentioned could have been a contributing factor, plus that I had been immobile for four three months and that I had been chronically ill for so long (even though the infection should have been gone since surgery number four in August), which means it takes more effort to be mobile because everything is deconditioned. Given all this, he didn't think that the appointment with him was unnecessary. Like the ER doctor I had seen the previous week, he said that it is important to get a high heart rate checked out and was surprised that I had been discharged after surgery without having seen a cardiologist in the hospital. He also suggested we do an echocardiogram of my heart just in case there was something going on structurally. All in all, though, he said that he didn't think there was anything major that we needed to be concerned about. So that is great news, and a relief to know that everything is going well with my ticker.

Since then, I have still had some issues with tachycardia, but all in all my heart rate seems to be slowing down. At the most it is around 100, instead of the 120-30 it was at for a whole, but it gets as low as the 70s! Fingers crossed that it continues to decrease as I recover from surgery =)