Treading Water

Well, I've been for my treadmill stress test (you can read up on it HERE ) and of course nothing showed up!! I should have read up on the test before I went (and shouldn't have gone when I still had a bit a cold - that's what Janice says anyway). I thought when I had reached 100% of my target heart rate, it was a danger sign. It turns out that is what the test sets out to achieve to get most info from the scans and blood pressure.

The cardiac Nurse in charge of the operation said there was nothing in the readings showed any cause for concern, so I asked her if I needed to start taking the Beta-Blockers again (you have to stop 2-3 days before the test as they affect the true reading). She said she didn't know, but wold try to locate the Consultant dealing with my case. I expected her to return with a Yeah or Neigh, but the Consultant himself turned up!

There were a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, he wanted to run over the results of the test. Basically, although nothing adverse showed up on the scans, there is still a 15% chance that the Bruce protocol test doesn't pick up on every person with narrowing arteries. If we wanted to more certain that there was or wasn't a problem, the hospital could run an angiogram on me, but there is the possibilty of the angiogram actually causing a heart attack or stroke, and given my otherwise good health, he didn't think this was such a good idea. So, in the end ,we decided that the best option was to stop taking the beta blockers and aspirin, and see how I progressed. Neither he nor I are keen to keep taking medication long term "just in case", especially, as he said the angiogram would probably show narrowing arteries regardless of a problem as I was Scottish!

The other reason he came to see me himself was that when the nurse showed him my notes, it reminded him of my case and the difficulty of a definite diagnosis. Another patient had appeared last week, other wise healthy, but with chest pains, and there were similarites between them. The consultant was giving a talk in the afternoon on the dangers of jumping to conclusions, based on limited evidence and the difficulties of diagnosing heart problems, when there are many other illnesses with the same symptoms. I told him I had no objection to my case being used in his talk, and he assured me it would be used anonymously.