Well, I made the visit to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN today to get a look at my heart. As many of you know, I have WPW (Wolff Parkinson White Syndrome). It is basically an extra electrical pathway in my heart that will cause my heart to beat rapidly on occasion. I haven't had a lot of problems with this lately, but I have noticed a significant increase in my RHR (resting heart rate) a couple of years ago. My typical RHR was always around 50 bpm (in the evenings, if I would do a test, it would go down to 44 or so). This was the case until last year, when I noticed my RHR go up into the upper 60's. It doesn't seem likely that this is related to WPW, but we thought it was worth checking out. Last year, I noticed a lot of chest pain and fatigue in training, and that was cause for alarm. So, I took a lot of time off, stepped down in my training, and gave it some time to recover. While the chest pains have subsided, I still experience fatigue and my RHR hasn't gone back down. Also, my blood pressure is slightly elevated. So, I got a referral to the Mayo to check it out.
Today we had some basic tests - an electrocardiogram, an echogram, a chest x-ray, some blood work, and a halter monitor set up. I will turn in the halter monitor on Saturday, and return to the Mayo on Monday for a review of the results.
I was very impressed with the Mayo - they were extremely efficient and had the work done within a couple of hours.
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