Hi everyone, i’m new here. After reading the recent posts on HR and arythmia’s I thought I would share my recent experience. For 7 years or so I have had a heart rhythm abnormality called left bundle branch block (LBBB). It is benign for the most part and doesn’t affect training and racing except sometimes fools my HRM. As a consequence I have to visit my local electrophysiologist once a year or so. I’ve been mostly a short course guy but last August (04) I was set to fly to Penticton to sign up for IMCanada 2005. Around the same time I went to see my doctor and had the required echocardiogram and stress test. After this test he told me to stop training completely! After a couple of months of nuclear studies, MRI’s etc he diagnosed me with the beginning stages of cariomyopathy (CM), a serious disease where the heart muscle weakens. Apparantly my EF was low (50%) and my heart was enlarged. Be wanted to start me betablockers and bloodpressure medication and said that I would be welcome to exersize lightly in a medically supervised clinic. He also suggested I see a heart muscle specialist right away to help me manage my disease. I told him I wished to hold off on the drugs until then.
Total buzzkill.
CM is a serious disease and I started to become an expert on it as do many sick people with their respective diseases. Eventually I accepted my situation and was happy that I could have an almost normal quality of life, although certainly different from my regular routine…I could no longer train or compete. The bike was in the basement and I had not openned a tri mag in months- it was hard to get excited about new gear and all that.
The heart muscle guy put me through many of the same tests with the same result. He said however that one of the definitive test for this disease is a VO2 max test. So I did one of those. Note that the test was done at a clinic that only deals with sick people. We never finished the test. I am 46 years old and maxed out the machine at a VO2max of 46 with no sign of any change in gas exchange so the doctors were not sure where my VO2max would have ended up but for their purposes the good news was that I was above normal on VO2max vs the general population. Next I had an echocardiogram/stress test where they do the echo after getting your HR up. When my HR is up my EF is normal! And BTW, my heart is normal size. Recommendation from the doctor- no restrictions at all- train my heart out and come see him in a year! I lost seven months.
Learnings for me: 1) I respect my doctors and they are both well regarded specialists, but make sure you get second opinions. 2) don’t take the good stuff in your life for granted. 3) little miracles do happen (it feels like a miracle to me).
I’m training!
