Heart Monitor

Last night when taking my blood pressure before bed, I noticed a new icon on my blood pressure cuff. Apparently I have an irregular heartbeat. So, I went into Dr. Wilder and am now having my heart monitored for 24 hours. 

I'll be commenting against this post with events that occur while being monitored so that I can tell them what's going on, they gave me a little booklet to write it, like I won't lose that! 

Feel free to ignore all those comments.

Verapamil day 2: Developing a head ache.

I don't really know if people care about this level of detail but I do want to record it.  Is it easy to unsubscribe?

This morning my BP was the lowest I can recall it ever being.
   104/71
Heart rate
   81

I've had a low grade headache since I woke up. It's been getting stronger though and recently was enough for me to want to take Ibuprofen.  We shall see if it controls it or not.  It's not a permanent solution, but I have massage scheduled tomorrow and not all headaches are caused by meds... ;)

Sigh

4 meds.   Rrr.

New Med, day 1 (so far so good)

I have been asked to take Verapamil (120mg, once per day) for 3 months.  I have been very trepidatious about this because Verapamil is a Calcium Channel Blocker.  I've been on Norvasc before, which is also a Calcium Channel Blocker.  I only ever took Norvasc once.  It was horrible.  I had a completely incapacitating headache and felt like I was not likely to survive it.  We got me through it.  Dr Wilder (my primary who talked me through the first incident) assured me that Verapamil worked in a different enough way, that the same result was not likely.   

So, I was a little worried about starting the drug.  Nonetheless, last evening (Sunday), I started it.  

It felt rather odd after a few hours.  I was moving more slowly and deliberately than normal and wanted to be sure I took it easy.  The world didn't seem "quite right" though nothing hurt.  

This morning, my blood pressure was as low as I recall seeing it.  Pretty much right at normal.  Heart rate too.

I restarted the Metformin as well.  I noticed when I came off that a number of weeks ago, that my mental health was a lot better, but that my physical health was a lot worse.  So I'm trying to see if I can detect any changes in my mental state on restarting.  Of course this muddies the test a little and exact causality may be hard to determine. 

So far, I feel ok.  As the day wears on, we shall see.

Thanks for listening...

--Frank

And the verdict is....

Not guilty.

They say it's very unlikely to be IH as my symptoms to not actually match.  The lack of seeing heat shimmer in my vision I think means two things:  That it's not likely IH (which the Dr said out loud) and that I'm not in iminent danger of losing my vision.  Which is superb since that is the thing I was worried about most.

They say it's most likely Vascular Headache or Cough Headache (the guy was hysterical i that he asked if in all this time I'd googled cough headache? (I hadn't.))

So verapomil for 3 months with follow up.

--Frank
PS:  The number of times they said "You have a very nice brain" was kind of disturbing.

Neurology appointment scheduled

Well, it took longer than I I thought it would, but I have an appointment with Neurology at 1 p.m. today. Beth is going to come with me so that's nice. We're going to go to lunch beforehand which is also nice.

Tests and Dr Availability

Note to self:

When "tests" are scheduled, be sure the doctor who will be following up on said tests, is expected to be in the office for the couple of days after the test is performed.

Premature?

I sent the following to Dr Wilder:

Dr Wilder.
I guess I have to admit to being a little freaked out right now. Is this pre-mature? Should I be significantly worried? I didn't like the stats I saw about blindness even one little bit. I know it's too early to know if I should be worried, but ... I just thought you should know. I do have emotional support.

To which I got the following reply:

I would say for right now you should relax. It is not even clear that there is anything wrong but we do need to arrange the followup.

I will let you know as soon as I have some info for you but try to just do relaxation breathing etc and we will arrange the followup.

Elisabeth

Now:

While I do feel better...  I suppose it might be easier to relax if I were her.

I do love my Dr.  She's the best.

A little freaked out.

So, they are talking about a lumbar puncture, which I guess is not supposed to be a big deal.  Not sure I can see it that way.  I'm also not sure what they'd be doing it for...  further diagnostics or to immediately relieve some pressure?

The vision stuff and the invasive testing is... intimidating.

I will hopefully know more soon.  How soon the schedule my appt, will tell me a little about how serious they think it is.

MRI Results

Dr Wilder (my incredible Primary Care Physician) sent me a note at about 2:30 on Sunday the 28th.  I didn't see it until 10:30, but that's another matter.  What it said was that the MRI suggested a codition called Intracranial Hypertension.  It is recommended we do further testing if I am having ongoing headaches.  (I am.)

This has led to some research.  

Questions to answer:

• What is this and how serious is it?  
• This is increased pressure in the brain, in my brief research I found the following which, frankly, has me a little on edge.
• There are two types of this, Chronic and Idiopathic. 
• Chronic basically means they were able to determine the root cause.
• Idiopathic is basically a catch all for I don't know.
• Idiopathic is terrifying because between 1 in 5 and 1 in 20 people go blind.  So yeah, there is that.
• If I need a specialist referral, where do I want to be for this condition?  
• (This turns out to be tricky, but I probably want to be at MGH though being somewhere Dr Wilder can coordinate is extremely compelling).

So, what is next:

    Next I have to wait for Dr Wilder to contact neurology and make a followup appointment to do more tests to discover if this is what I have.  I'm not even sure what to hope for here.

MRI

On Saturday, November 19th, 2016 I underwent an MRI of my brain.  The MRI was ordered because I have persistent pain behind my left eye (yes, the one with vision) occasionally when I cough hard or sneeze.  This has been going on for a while.  I will update this post with specifics of the MRI itself.  I will add other posts for other topics.