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Showing posts with label coronary health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coronary health. Show all posts

13 September 2011

Cardiac stress test and echocardiogram

Tuesday, 13 September 2011

I convinced the nurses in Dr. Markus' office to allow me to connect the HR monitor while they guided me through the stress test and echocardiogram. The stress test took about 15 minutes, though the playback shows it occurring within 00:01:43. This was followed by about 5 minutes of monitored cooldown, and then time in the waiting room until the echocardiogram. The echocardiogram took perhaps 15 minutes, after which I turned off the HR monitor.

The HR monitor consistently corroborated the HR recorded by the medical machines.

Ride conditions
Time elapsed: 01:04:20Heart rate: 75 bpm HRave, 156 bpm HRmax
Playback of the ride

07 September 2011

Rain day—here's another reason I bike-commute

Wednesday, 7 September 2011

It's been raining, usually lightly, since late last night, but that's not the primary reason that I drove to work today. I'm scheduled for an entry appointment with my cardiologist. Yep. Heart problems, stroke, poor circulation, low pulmonary function, and how I can avoid them are my topics with Dr. Tim Markus of the Dayton Heart Center.

I just turned 60. How did that happen so suddenly? Did I know anything about its coming? So I've been setting up tests and interviews. I want to have a baseline of my condition now, and maybe some idea of what I can expect of myself in the next decade. Because my father died of a sudden-onset heart attack and my mother of a stroke that left her weakening for a month on her way toward death, and because I am now ten years and seventeen years, respectively, from their ages at death, it's time for an investigation of what their genetics has manifested in my body.

I started a month ago with a simple body fat analysis at the University of Dayton. I've also requested a lactose threshold test or a VO2max test from the same UD physiology department. Today I saw the cardiologist to see if any standard cardiac tests are in order. After an entry EKG and interview, he suggested an exercise stress test just to quantify what I've experienced in my heart training on the daily commute and an echocardiogram because of the results of an echocardiogram from ten years ago. He also suggested two other tests that are available at local hospitals, a "heart saver CT" (an coronary calcium scan, available from Kettering Hospital and Good Samaritan Hospital) and a "lifeline screening" (an ultrasound of arteries in the neck, belly, ankles, and arms, available from Kettering and Good Sam).

Non-ride conditions
Temperature: 59 to 63°F throughout the day
Precipitation: constant light rain, 1.46 inches since 5:00 a.m.
Winds: ranging from 6 to 11 mph from the northwest