A health update

A short note.   I saw my allergist today.   He is the one that called me personally to strongly urge me to go back on my heart rate medication.   I was seeing him because I made the mistake of leaving the special soaps he prescribed too long on my face / scalp, and it gave me another bad chemical burn.   My face was the worst with first open sores, then red peeling skin as it healed like a bad sun burn.   My scalp had sores and was crazy itchy as it heals.  

He has prescribed new medications for my breathing and is sending me to a dermatologist as it has become that bad.  But the most important part of the exam was when he listened to my chest and asked me questions about my heart / breathing.     See the issue was I was on a Beta Blocker to keep my heart rate low, because I was running in the 120s beats per minutes, and when doing things or stressed I would go up into the 150s.    But to have the allergy shots I need, I have to stop taking the Beta Blocker medication that slows my heart.   So I made my primary doctor remove the medication.

But this time when the medication was removed, my heart rate went much higher and much more out of control than ever before.  Plus I started to have serious shortness of breath, to the point where I struggled to breathe just sitting at my desk, while any exertion set off a panic to get air in.   So at this doctor’s personal phone call to me, I went back on the medication after a month or more.  

Today as part of my exam, he listened to my chest and spent more time doing so than is normal.  He went back and forth from my front to my back and only asked me to breathe deep once.    Then he asked me how had my breathing been since I went back on the heart rate medication.  I told him how it improved but still was worse than it had been before.  I described how I still had times of shortness of breath, which means times I feel I cannot get a breath of air in.  I told him it happened really bad when I laid on my right side, and if I got excited or was doing stuff.    He then asked me a question.  Do I ever feel like my chest feels funny when that breathing problem happens?   Yes I told him, I feel like there is something inside my chest lurching around.    He paused and then told me he wanted me to tell the heart doctor I see on the 30th this, and explained that when he listened my heart was not in complete rhythm.   Just sitting there in his office, my heart was not in normal sinus rhythm.   It was skipping.  He is worried that during that time period I was off that medication with my heart rates in the 140s, I suffered damage to my heart.   

Well we will know at the end of the month.   I was not surprised by what he said because Ron, my spouse, worked in the open heart ICU for 18 years.  When this was happening, he was beside himself trying to get me to go back on the medication.   He also has been looking several times daily at my Apple Watch EKG readings and he has been very upset with them, showing me the pauses and different parts that should be differently shown.  I was not goods with strips in the ICUs, and so I can not see what he does.   He is good with them but like I said he did Open Heart ICU 18 years.  I will keep you updated, but that does explain my being so tired, so easily winded, wanting to go to bed so much, and why it is so hard to think some days.   Just one more thing to have to deal with.    Hugs