After a hilly ride on Monday, Tuesday was going to be either a day off or gentle recovery ride, it ended up being a bit more than I bargained for.
Photo by Gwilmore
Early in morning, I felt some disconcerting chest pains (and back pains.) I shrugged it off and went into Bradford for a cup of tea. On the train back, I was worried about the persistence of this chest discomfort. A quick google search, suggested chest pains are pretty high priority (Chest Pains NHS advice). The advice seemed to be to ring the ambulance, they won’t mind a false alarm. Also with recent blood clot episode, I had extra reason to worry. Initially, I made appointment with doctor, but then rang an ambulance.
With history of blood clot, the ambulance wanted to take me in to hospital. He was quite chatty, talking about how he cycles 3 miles to work, but doesn’t trust cycling on the roads. He mainly uses pavements. He’s too scared of the crazy drivers around. He says that he sees serious road traffic accidents every week. He blamed irresponsible young drivers driving too fast in powerful cars, so he doesn’t trust cars to keep him safe.
Anyway, in A&E, I had some blood tests taken. (which caused me to nicely feint). Unfortunately, one test was positive, indicating possible cardiac problems. This meant I had to be kept in. After a funny day of being wheeled around A&E and onto other wards I wasn’t feeling too bad, despite only eating one very plain cheese sandwich. However, At 3am I was woken up from my bed and moved off to the cardiac ward. Apparently an ECG (heart rate monitor) had shown increased regularities. It was at this point that I first started to be actually quite concerned. Images and visions of never cycling again crossed my mind. This didn’t sound good.
Anyway, in the morning, the consultant was less worried. He reckoned the wonky ECG from the night before were because the clips had been placed in the wrong place. The positive blood test could be due to other factors (such as being very fit). The consultant gave me three tests – another blood test, a chest ultra scan and a treadmill test.
This bucked up my spirits. After lying around all day on a hospital bed listening to snatched conversations and the wailing of a women in a nearby bed, I was excited to be getting some exercise and see how the heart responds. With all these negative blood tests and wonky ECGs I had started to doubt the health of my heart.
The treadmill starts off slow, then gets faster and faster, gradually raising your heart-rate. As this is going on, they are printing off heart beat charts. By now, I could start to recognise a healthy heart rate. The consultant was excited I stayed on the treadmill for 16 minutes, because the treadmill started off slow, and i took a while to get my heart working hard. I never got out of level 3 heart rate, my muscles are particularly useless at walking. Shame it wasn’t a cycle trainer.
The ultra scan was pretty normal. The nurse said it was clearly an athlete’s heart. – Looks quite slow and sluggish a reflection that the heart was much more efficient than untrained hearts. In fact one problem at night was my ECG machine kept beeping because I have a lower resting heart rate than normal (45). The machine is set to go off and unnaturally high or low heart rates. All the doctors and nurses seem permanently rushed off their feet, but eventually someone changed the settings to a lower min. heart level so I could be free of this beeping machine.
The final blood tests were fine, and the consultant said, you’re free to resume cycling. I had planned to do Fleet Moss today, but maybe I’ll put it off for another day.
Some Observations from spending a Night on the Cardiac Ward
- It was an Interesting experience being in hospital. I was in a ward with people who had pretty much all suffered heart attacks. You can’t help overhearing conversations. The chap next to me was told by the doctor, if he didn’t stop smoking he would definitely have another heart attack. The women across the ward, was having frequent panic attacks and unable to comprehend advice to take a better diet.
- If you want to educate young people to adopt healthy lifestyles, you can do worse than take them around cardiac wards. It would be enough to put most people off deep fried mars bars and smoking….
- Due to an ageing population and a rise in ‘diseases of affluence’, the NHS faces increased demands on its funding. According to a recent report, the NHS is likely to cost an extra £20bn by the end of the decade. The government have said they are committed to pursuing further efficiency savings within the NHS.
- I’d just like to put on record that there are really no potential efficiency savings to be made from the cheese sandwiches found in A&E. I’ve never eaten such a spartan evening meal.
- Hospitals are tremendously chaotic and busy places. At one point I was sat in a queue for an X-ray with several other people. There was a traffic jam of trolleys and wheel chairs. A real cross section of society. Again hard to see any efficiency savings in the use of space!
- The ambulance man (he was pretty chatty) said Bradford was a real heart attack hotspot. Many people in Bradford led sedentary lives and had a poor diet, consisting of heavily fried food or takeaways.
- I feel a real connection to Bradford, because I went to school for 7 years in the city. If anything it’s my home town. I hope the next generation can be encouraged to be more healthy (without having to cycle on pavements)
- I feel like the healthiest person to ever spend a night on the Cardiac Arrest award. All for just a minor pressure on the heart. I felt bad for taking up so many resources when it was probably nothing other than minor muscle strain from exertion on the hills of Baildon the day before. But, the doctors said a big part of the NHS is to catch problems before they occur. They tested for quite a few possible problems, such as ‘athlete’s heart’ and some other conditions I’ve forgotten.
- Chest Pains can be Serious. I don’t know much about cardiac problems, but chest pains do need careful examination. There’s no harm in getting checked out before something serious happens.
This blog really scares the shit out of me. I have also experienced chest pains before but was due because i smoke alot in the younger days even though i still smoke now.
Trying hard to kick the habit
I hope the blog doesn’t scare. It just shows that sometimes things are definitely worth checking out. But, often there are reasons behind it which are not serious. But, doctors say they always try to be pre-emptive and not wait for something serious.
Estuary, I am ashamed to say many years ago I used to smoke myself I gave it up by easily believing that there was nothing I needed or enjoyed about it.
Once I had given up, I sometimes used to look at people who were smoking and enjoying it. I remember thinking how free I was from that and how I just didn’t need those cigarettes.
Does that help at all?
Flippin’ eck Tejvan. Although I understand how you were worried, you can breathe easy now and perhaps think of the whole experience as having a thorough MOT check.
I think public health is a fascinating subject, having worked with someone from that profession for a while. The growing amount of money spent on lifestyle conditions such as diabetes and obesity is shocking, I’ve blogged about that recently myself.
Another example of how you have such a good talent for relaying these observations in such a readable way.
thanks Doug, it was certainly an experience being on a cardiac ward and interesting hearing issues going around (like concern over diet in Bradford)
my goodness. glad you are ok. i like bradford too.
what were the chest pains then?
they were pretty mild, some kind of muscular tear.
How very scary!
And very pleasing it has come to (almost) nothing. You do appear to have been told it was the result of ‘minor pressure on the heart’……. is this a suggestion you are doing a little too much exercise? Or that this is a normal reaction to exercise?
As a result of your two ‘episodes’ I would become (even) more aware of my body in your place. I wouldn’t necessarily cut back on what I do at all but I would ‘listen’ carefully. I strongly suspect your spiritual side has taught you to be very aware of that anyway.
Onward and upward – but not too steeply perhaps!
The doctor indicated cycling was fine and nothing to worry about. It wasn’t due to overtaxing heart.
Great article. Completely understand what you mean about feeling healthy in cardiac care, a bit of a fraud even!
I had a similar thing, an SVT which caused my heart to beat at round 220bpm for nearly three hours which was pretty scary.
The really annoying thing though is all the fat-knackers at work gloating about how bad for you cycling and running can be!
I’m having a cather ablation next Tuesday afternoon and hopefully back on Winnats Pass within a few weeks!
Hope you stay well.
Jon
>The really annoying thing though is all the fat-knackers at work gloating about how bad for you cycling and running can be!
Yes, funny. Though I think exercise is a great way to stay out of cardiac ward in long term. Good luck with Winnats Pass, want to be visiting there myself sometime
There are few things more dispiriting than thinking you won’t be able to do the very thing that keeps you healthy due to ill-health.
Completely different ballpark, but I had a similar experience regarding my knee last month. I had three doctors basically tell me that it was just age (I’m only 34) and I’d have to live with it and scale back my cycling. A friend who is a doctor then took a look and concluded that it was probably just the tracking of my kneecap. He taught me stretches and urged me to strengthen certain muscles. So far so good, although I guess I’ll see in time.
I also had a friend (also 34) who spent well over a year suffering severe anxiety because he’d been told he had heart problems and he stopped doing all sorts of stuff. As far as I can tell, most of the problem was the initial diagnose leading to his taking medication that had side-effects as well as the resultant stress. He’s basically fine now.
My point is, you can be physiologically fine and miss out on something you love (cycling) while investigations are ongoing and that’s sad in itself, even if it’s far better than finding out you have some major problem.
I’ve heard many people say there doctor told there knee was useless, but going to good pysiotherapist they got better soon.
I was shooting for empathy.
I may have missed and hit ‘self-indulgent moaning’.