Skip to main content

Now What?

I know some of you have questioned it, but I really do have a good heart, as confirmed by a cardiologist this morning. EKG and stress test showed nothing abnormal.

BUT, I'm so NOT impressed with my treadmill stress test. I was hoping I would at least find out my true max heart rate through all of this so I would at least have a reference point of some sort. The lady got me all hooked up and showed me where my HR was on the screen and said "now, you are at 60-something right now, you can stop whenever you want, but we'd really like to see that HR get to at least 164." I told her that surely wouldn't be a problem. So I start walking. Whopee. Every 3 minutes the incline and speed increases. I asked her after a few minutes if I would get to find out my true max HR. She said "your 100% max? Well, that is 193. Because it is 220 minus your age." GREAT. She knows nothing. I tell her that I could easily get over 193 and that my high heart rate when exercising was the whole reason I was there. She said "well, we don't really want you to get that high." Wonderful. I thought that was the point.

I started running at 12 minutes in, with a 18% grade at maybe 5.2? mph. I hit 196 13.5 minutes in and she stops the test. WTF? She says "well, we really have all the info we need, so I'm going to stop now." I said that I could keep going and my HR could easily go over 200, but she stopped it anyway.

So I'm glad to know there is nothing obviously wrong with my heart - everything looks to be working properly, everything is sized correctly, and there are no irregularities with the rhythm, but I am not any closer to figuring out what in the world to do with a 195 HR that feels like my heart is going to come out of my throat than I was before all the testing.

I guess my next step will be to do VO2 max and lactate threshold testing, but I'm a little weary of that right now because I don't know if I'm overtrained/under-recovered and if that would skew the results, or if it would still be good to get the testing done now and then again in a few months.

I have come up with a new profession though: cardiologist/personal trainer/coach/overtrainer-analyzer. Think someone would hire me if I became one of those?
Labels:

Comments

Sarah said…
Dang, I'm angry she cut you off too. I'm very curious to see what your results would be, since the same thing happens to me. My resting heart rate is around 60, but when running -- even at a pace that is comfortable to maintain -- I easily get up to 180-185. If I'm running hard, I'll hit >190 without a problem, and I've seen >200 before when I'm going all out.

It worries me a bit. But since every checkup I've ever had shows healthy...
October 27, 2008 at 1:13 PM
CoachLiz said…
That chaps my hide that she cut you off. What you do now is use the RPE scale. If 195 felt like it was going to come out of your throat, put that feeling on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being your max or better yet on a scale of 6 to 20 with 6 being asleep and 20 being your max.

I have never seen my heart rate up that high. The higest I have ever seen it 188. Everyone is different due to genetics and not 220- your age.
October 28, 2008 at 7:43 PM
jen said…
Hey Kathleen. The purpose of the stress test isn't to see how high you can get your HR. It's to look at the EKG during exercise to see if the heart is experiencing any ischemia (not getting enough blood to the heart muscle).
November 5, 2008 at 8:17 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Still here. Still infertile.

Sigh.  Here we are again.  We knew all along we would be able to start the process for baby #2 when Sloane was nine months old.  I had said we did not necessarily want kids that close together, but knew just because we started then did not mean we would get pregnant then.  If I had only known how true that is becoming.  Silly us had started having visions of three kids.  The only way we can have three kids is to have things go smoothly, not lose embryos, and not lose time.  Well, so far we have lost an embryo and a lot of time in the quest for our next baby. I breezed through prep for our transfer in early May.  The stress load was so much less than before because I thought we had it figured out.  We had Sloane as a great distraction.  My lining was better than it has ever been before - by far.  Then, the day after Mother's Day, I found out it did not work.  And I was immediately thrown back into the depths of infertility hell....
Post a Comment
Read more

Into the Donor Egg World We Go

As I sit down to write this, I'm shocked to see February 27, 2022 was the last post I've written about our IVF journey.  In some ways, it seems like so much has happened over the last year, and on the other hand it seems like nothing has happened at all because we are back to square one. I'll provide a quick summary of the last year, but please understand this won't even begin to describe the true roller coaster ride we have been on.  I actually don't think it is even appropriate to call it a roller coaster because that indicates there are some ups.  Our ride has been more like a train ride through hell. After our failed transfer in February, we decided to take a break in March to let my body rest a bit before transferring our next embryo.  During that time, a friend reached out and told me about her friend that hadn't had success here but did at CCRM in Colorado.  At the time it almost felt like a divine intervention, but I now know better.  We spent seven...
Post a Comment
Read more

We did it!

21 comments
Read more