Wednesday, March 11, 2009

30 days and a little ray of hope

I phoned my cardiologist at 7:30 this morning and after talking to me for a minute he suggested I come in for and ecg immediately, which I did after a bite to eat. As I suspected the ecg showed atrial fibriallation, the reason for me feeling so lousy while exercising the passed few days.

He has put me on amiodarone immediately, which is a heart rythm modifying drug. It's quite nasty, if it's used chronically and thats why I'm not on it, but for acute use I guess it can be quite handy. Search in google images for amiodarone and you'll see some of the side effects. He just wants me on a high dose until tomorrow morning, perhaps it just helps my heart slip back into rythm. If not he will try a cardioversion, which entails a mild anaesthetic and a high voltage shock to the chest. Fun :P

If that doesn't work then he has told me that there is a new drug recently released on the US market that has the same rythm modifying effects as amiodarone, but none of the nasty side effects. In a year or two it should be available in SA and I could take it as a chronic medication to keep my heart in rythm.

What he said about the 2 Oceans is that if I'm feeling good about it I should do it. If not then I shouldn't. Well at the moment I'm not feeling that good about it, but I'll keep training gently and see what tomorrow holds. I'm still gonna go for a run this evening and it'll be interesting to see what my HR monitor does.

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