Medical Adventures #2

For Mr. K, who never misses a beat.

November 2022: Not Getting to the Root of the Problem

Well, that could have been the end of the story, but the fact was, it wasn’t just the murmur that I wanted evaluated. I had noticed my fitness dropping over recent months. For many years I had run regularly, and if I wasn’t training for a race I didn’t pay too much attention to my time. But one day I happened to look at my stats, and I noticed I was really slow. Getting lazy, I guess. Then, when I took a longer run I had to stop and walk from time to time. That had never happened before. What was going on? 

I had explained all this at the cardiology office. I said that it was like when you are in a car and press the gas pedal, and you don’t go. That’s how my body felt. I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t out of breath, I wasn’t working hard. My body just wouldn’t go. I would say I told all this to the cardiologist at that office, except I never saw one. I saw only the physician assistant. I was puzzled. You make an appointment with a cardiologist, but you never see one? What is the point? I thought maybe I would see the real guy after being screened by the assistant. Nope. And especially with all the drama of the non-existent heart attack. Where was that guy?

After I left the hospital I received a phone call from the hospital asking how I was doing. And then, from my insurance company. They wanted to know how I was doing. Who says insurance companies are heartless? But the physician assistant who told me I was ready to die, and the boss of all the cardiology in the place? Silence.

The stated diagnosis given when I was in the hospital was “likely myocarditis.” Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle. I had never heard of it. I asked the cardiac nurse how I could have gotten it. 

“It comes from a respiratory infection that goes to the heart.”

“But I haven’t had a respiratory infection.” 

“Oh, you can still get it anyway.”

No one in the hospital could explain how a seemingly healthy, athletic, never-sick human person could acquire an inflammation in her heart out of the blue. And they talked about it like it was a confirmed condition, not a “likely” one. My take was that Dr. Catheter Cardio needed to put something plausible down so that the insurance company would pay. So I didn’t believe the diagnosis. 

The hospital people sent me home with buckets of Tylenol to chow down, and told me if I started throwing up blood I should come back to the emergency room. Isn’t medical advice interesting!

The doctors there kept telling me I have to “follow up” at the cardiology office. Okay, I’ll go back there and find out the real diagnosis. After all, for the last two days the very nice medical people have been needling out my bodily fluids, collecting my pee, counting every heart beat, and appraising every millimeter of blood pressure. Surely those attentive professionals at the Cardiology Office Where I Never Saw a Cardiologist will put these pieces of the puzzle together and come up with the reason they thought I was dying. Surely they know that “likely” doesn’t mean “definitely” and that they can do better than “likely.” Surely they will figure out what is going on.

Hahahahahaha!

I went back to the Cardiology Office Where I Never Saw a Cardiologist and saw the same physician assistant. She began lecturing me about cholesterol and my diet and cholesterol drugs. I was pretty surprised. Dr. Catheter Cardio told me my arteries were perfectly clear. I did not have a heart attack. Didn’t she read the hospital records? Didn’t she check and see what happened to me? I asked her what the basis was for recommending drugs. I had researched this and done some on line assessments from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology and others and, according to these, my risk of a cardiovascular problem was very low. Plus, I studied the AHA/ACC/AACVPR/AAPA/ABC/ACPM/ADA/AGS/APhA/ASPC/NLA/PCNA Guideline on the Management of Blood Cholesterol: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Clinical Practice Guidelines. RunningBarb is no slacker! And yes, that is the real name of the thing! I wanted to know what her evidence was for recommending that I become a life-long consumer of these drugs. She told me she would send me some articles. She had also mentioned that since my mother died of a stroke I would be more likely to die earlier than I would otherwise. What? Don’t your chances of dying early depend on more factors than the age of your parent when she dies?

But I had another issue on my mind. During my first visit she listed a bunch of tests that could potentially be given to find out what was wrong with me. They could put me on a treadmill while I was on a heart monitor and see what was happening to my body when I exercised. They could do a nuclear stress test (scary!). They could do an MRI. And several others. But this time she never mentioned any of this. She told me to stop eating nuts, eat lots of berries, and come back in three months and she would do another blood test. 

I left the office completely disillusioned. I wanted to know why I had “likely myocarditis,” didn’t she? I felt like the Cardiology Office Where I Never Saw a Cardiologist was a big factory, and I was treated exactly the same as everyone who went there, and we were on a conveyer belt and as each of was carried by we opened our mouths and had a couple of drugs popped into them, and that was our remedy. No investigation, no curiosity, no interest in getting to a legitimate resolution. It was disappointing, depressing, and deflating.

However, when I later received the articles I had requested from her I read them thoroughly and, I have to admit, she was right about everything. 

No, just kidding. I never heard from her again. I tossed the throw-up-blood-inducing Tylenol in the trash and didn’t go back. 

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