Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Heart Condition Update

I made a return visit to the doctor today to get my results of the blood work and holter monitor from the condition I posted about HERE.



The 24 hour monitoring of my heart revealed nothing major. There were a couple of incidents of tachycardia which I don't understand because from the definition it means that the heart rate increases. I never feel my heart rate increase, it just skips beats. Hmmmmm? So I diagnose myself with Ectopic beats, when the heart skips a beat or adds a beat. The heart rate is "normal".



Either way, the doc didn't seem to concerned. I also have noticed a decrease in "cardiac episodes" so I asked "Do you think I'll live past Thursday?" and she nodded and responded "yes, you should live past Thursday." She also explained that I could opt for medication (beta-blockers) or wait. I said "I'll wait. I hate drugs. It seems to be improving so we'll just wait and see." She agreed that this was a wise decision.



The blood work came back very normal as well except for one thing, triglycerides. My blood pressure is on the low side of normal, my sugar level is good. Thyroid checks out (and that was the one that the doc was looking for to make sure all was ok there). I was curious about my cholestoral levels since I've never had those checked. I was expecting rather bad news there...and not that it was great, because this was the area of concern but here are the results:



Test NameResultExpected RangeAbnormality
Cholesterol181107-200Normal
Triglycerides55435-160HIGH
HDL Cholesterol2445-65LOW
LDL Cholesterol4650-140LOW






The doc says that the Triglycerides are high but that it could be a skewed reading if I had eaten that day before the blood work was done. I had eaten, so what we are going to do now is do the blood work again on Monday, and I am not to eat anything until after the blood work is done. Then we can get a more accurate reading and go from there.



Turns out the bad cholesterol (LDL) is pretty low, but the "good" cholesterol (HDL) is also low which is a red flag. Triglycerides are pretty high, but the doc says will wait until we get the results back from the blood work next week before we decide the next course of action. She said this is nothing that medication/diet couldn't fix.



So, all in all, it's a good report! I will live past Thursday! YAY!



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