I suppose it is time I talked about my health. It has not been good lately.
After the Sun Run I did feel weak, but I assumed it was because I had exerted myself a lot. However, my iPhone, in concert with my Apple watch started giving me warnings about “atrial fibrillation”. Looking closer into it, I find that Apple has also been tracking my “Heart Rate Variability”. This is a nice chart that shows my heart having very little variability; until the day after the sun run, then it spikes up. And it has stayed spiked up ever since. If I check my pulse by feeling my carotid artery, I can clearly feel it; strong but not always even.
Interestingly, I went back through the history and there was another spike that lasted for a week at the end of November. I correlated that to my running, and the day before the spike I had done a run where I had gone quite a bit faster than usual.
So, I am going to have to go with the assumption that this heart weirdness was caused by running.
I think I have noticed the changes since, or I may just be hyperaware of my body now. I watch the heart rate on my watch. It goes fairly high at times if I am pushing myself at all on my runs; I don’t know if it did that previously as I was not paying attention. I do feel more tired lately and I don’t push myself anymore.
That last part is actually the worst part. If I can’t push myself to be better, the runs become more of a task than a challenge. I am very competitive, and I purposely manipulate myself knowing that. It is how I run everyday; to beat the me from yesterday. And so I want to be faster on each run. But I can’t do that anymore if I have to worry about any pain in my chest.
I’ve seen my doctor about this. He didn’t seem to think it was atrial fibrillation, but he wasn’t sure. At one point last month I was wearing a Holter monitor for 23 hours to see what my heart does throughout the day. I made sure to do a run while wearing it so that it got a complete picture of my health. Since I can’t shower with it on, I made sure to do that run right before it was going to be taken off.
I also went in for a treadmill test: hooked up to heart monitors while they make me go on a treadmill at ever increasing incline and speed. I was doing that without issue, but the operator did turn it off early because my heart rate was spiking. He did recommend I start taking baby aspirin regularly to prevent clots from forming from blood pooling.
The thing is, I do not feel bad most of the time. Only when I push myself on a run and then it is only a bit of pressure in the chest. And my heart rate, for the most part, is actually fairly low. It is just irregular.
In about a week I get to talk to a heart specialist. Hopefully I can get some feedback as to what is going on. I would like to be able to get my heart under control so I can stop worrying.
Aside from the heart, I’ve also had another issue. Under my left eye there has been a bump that has been slowly growing. It showed up early this year, and I wasn’t too concerned. But then it kept getting bigger. I had a video conference with my doctor and he wasn’t too concerned. His recommended treatment was a warm compress. I did that for several months and it still kept growing.
I was eventually sent to an ophthalmologist and she thought it was a cyst or a sty. In any case she made an appointment for me to see a surgeon to get it removed. However, it takes about a month and a half for that to take place.
The thing is, recently the warm compress has started to work. The sty is starting to leak fluids. It’s a little disgusting, but it is much smaller than it used to be. I feel I should cancel my appointment with the surgeon, but since it takes so long to get one of these appointments, I don’t want to just throw it away.
I think that is about it for my health. I will try and keep things posted about how they are doing.