• I Have a Defective Heart

    Who has two thumbs and a heart defect?
    This guy!

    Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD) - Creative Commons Image from Wikipedia
    Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD) – Creative Commons Image from Wikipedia

    I feel like I’ve been living at my cardiologist’s office this week. I was in this morning for my stress test when my doctor pulled me aside to share some news about my ultrasound. (That raised a big red flag since I wasn’t expecting any results until next week when all my tests were done.) He told me that I have ventricular septal defect (VSD), better known as a hole in my heart. It’s a genetic defect where there’s a hole between the ventricals of your heart. My doctor said ~10% of the population has it, and not everyone has health problems as a result, so we don’t know if mine is causing or contributing to my chest pain at this point.

    (Of course you know the moment I got out of my doctor’s office, the first thing I did was call my parents and say, “It’s all your fault.”)

    Then he reminded me not to run this weekend – I can walk instead.

    Once I was done talking with my doctor, I got to have my stress test – that’s the one where you run on the treadmill with electrodes attached to your chest. They gave me a half gown thing to wear over my electrodes, but I was in a sports bra and I have no modesty issues so I opted to run without it. I had 8 electrodes on my chest and a blood pressure cuff on my arm where my tech periodically took my blood pressure. We had to go up four levels to get my heart rate up high enough – the speed and incline increased with each level. At each level, the machine produced an EKG printout. When it got challenging, the real issue wasn’t the speed, it was the incline. My calves and hamstrings were burning. I’m glad it only took 14 minutes to get through this.

    The worst part about doing a stress test is you can’t have caffeine for 24 hours before the test. I popped a caffeine pill the moment my test was over.

    My Holter ECG
    My Holter ECG

    After my stress test, they stuck a Holter ECG on me for 24 hours. It’s a heart monitor with 5 electrodes that connect to a recorder box that clips to my hip. When I saw the box, my first thought was “1990 called. They want their pager back.” With all these cords hanging off me, I feel like I’m wearing 5 iPods. For the duration of this test I’m not allowed to shower or sweat and they gave me a log to record any pain, dizziness, or other symptoms. I ‘m afraid one of the electrodes will come loose so I keep pushing on them. I probably look like I’m molesting myself. We’ll see how easy it is to sleep with this on my body.

    I’ll see my doctor next Thursday to get the results of all my tests and hopefully he’ll have a proposed plan of action to deal with my pain. Until then, I’ll still train for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon, but I’ll be walking my miles.