The Adventures of The Artist FORMERLY Known as Flop
Some of you may not know the story behind my username. The summer between first and second year university, I started fainting for apparently no reason. Because university students are notoriously sensitive people, I became known as Flop in many of my circles, for rather obvious reasons. There are still people who know me from that era, who have difficulty remembering my name, but if you refer to me as Flop, they know exactly who you are talking about. I saw many doctors, had many tests run on me, and was never able to get an explanation for the problem beyond "your blood pressure goes down sometimes."
In fact, they eventually "diagnosed" me with neuro-cardiac dysfunction with predominately vaso-depressor responses. Which literally means "your blood pressure goes down sometimes" with a nod towards the fact that the problem probably has something to do with either the heart, the brain, or both. The cardiologist I saw said he saw no cardiac irregularities but wanted to put me on beta-blockers anyway. The neurologist realized quickly that it wasn't a neurological issue, but took the time to find us a different specialist who might be able to help.
I eventually saw an endocrinologist, who prescribed me a medication intended to slightly raise my ambient blood pressure, so that if and when it dropped, it was less likely to bottom out completely and land me on the floor. However, when I gained a bit of weight, my ambient blood pressure rose on its own, and it became a concern that we might actually send it too high, so I don't take that medication anymore. Fortunately, when I gained a bit of weight and my blood pressure rose, I started passing out less frequently as well, so we took that as a win.
Over the past ten years or so, incidences of flopping have dropped from most days out of the week, to less than a dozen times a year, but there's something I've noticed. There seems to be a corellation between my depression and instances of flopping. I have no idea if this is a causal relationship, but it's been a thing for a while.
Events of the past two weeks or so have caused me to revisit what little I know about my condition, and something has occured to me. I have had many ECGs in my life, and there is something that has only be noticed twice, the first time by an over-eager cardiac intern in the emergency room, and the second time just a year ago by a paramedic: I have a very slight arrhythmia. Now, when I say very slight, I mean slight enough that although both of these medical professionals mentioned it, it was dismissively, with the tacit assumption that it couldn't possible explain the problem I'm having. But here's the thing, obviously the problem is intermittent, and they've only ever checked my heart AFTER I had an episode (obvs). So what I would be very interested to know is what my heart is doing BEFORE I have an episode.
To be fair, they did try to find out once. In about third year I had something called a 24 hour holter monitor, which involves electrodes and a little electronic doohickey that you carry around with you in a satchel for a 24 hour period. And wouldn't you know it, when I had the thing, I had a good day, so they had nothing to analyse.
The joys of being a medical mystery.
In fact, they eventually "diagnosed" me with neuro-cardiac dysfunction with predominately vaso-depressor responses. Which literally means "your blood pressure goes down sometimes" with a nod towards the fact that the problem probably has something to do with either the heart, the brain, or both. The cardiologist I saw said he saw no cardiac irregularities but wanted to put me on beta-blockers anyway. The neurologist realized quickly that it wasn't a neurological issue, but took the time to find us a different specialist who might be able to help.
I eventually saw an endocrinologist, who prescribed me a medication intended to slightly raise my ambient blood pressure, so that if and when it dropped, it was less likely to bottom out completely and land me on the floor. However, when I gained a bit of weight, my ambient blood pressure rose on its own, and it became a concern that we might actually send it too high, so I don't take that medication anymore. Fortunately, when I gained a bit of weight and my blood pressure rose, I started passing out less frequently as well, so we took that as a win.
Over the past ten years or so, incidences of flopping have dropped from most days out of the week, to less than a dozen times a year, but there's something I've noticed. There seems to be a corellation between my depression and instances of flopping. I have no idea if this is a causal relationship, but it's been a thing for a while.
Events of the past two weeks or so have caused me to revisit what little I know about my condition, and something has occured to me. I have had many ECGs in my life, and there is something that has only be noticed twice, the first time by an over-eager cardiac intern in the emergency room, and the second time just a year ago by a paramedic: I have a very slight arrhythmia. Now, when I say very slight, I mean slight enough that although both of these medical professionals mentioned it, it was dismissively, with the tacit assumption that it couldn't possible explain the problem I'm having. But here's the thing, obviously the problem is intermittent, and they've only ever checked my heart AFTER I had an episode (obvs). So what I would be very interested to know is what my heart is doing BEFORE I have an episode.
To be fair, they did try to find out once. In about third year I had something called a 24 hour holter monitor, which involves electrodes and a little electronic doohickey that you carry around with you in a satchel for a 24 hour period. And wouldn't you know it, when I had the thing, I had a good day, so they had nothing to analyse.
The joys of being a medical mystery.