On Tuesday afternoon, after Peter had returned the Holter to the hospital that morning, I got a call from the Cardiologist. He said that based on his findings he was prescribing two drugs for me to take and they were already on my medical card. Okayyy… I said I would pick them up in the morning and he said… no I needed to start them NOW. Wut? Peter was about to leave for a tapas tour but popped over to the farmacía and came back with just one of the prescriptions, saying they told him the other one wasn’t available for three days. Again… wut?
Anyhow, these are the two drugs I was prescribed. Apocard 100mg (Flecainide) which is used to treat tachycardia. The other, Luxiana 60mg (Edoxaban), is a blood thinner. You can see above that he also prescribed a blood pressure med Bisoprolol, maybe without checking that I was already taking Losartan for that (???). Obviously I can’t/won’t take both. But can I get in touch with him again to clear this up? Nope.
I mean, you know me. I hate taking meds unless absolutely necessary. But as I already had the Apocard and since it was apparently URGENT that I start taking these meds NOW, I started it on Wednesday. Twice a day. And I was able to get the Luxiana yesterday so am now taking that once a day. Along with the Losartan that I’ve been taking now for a couple of years.
But there was no explanation. Just that I was at high risk for having a stroke. And when I tried asking him more he switched to English saying it didn’t seem like I was understanding him in Spanish. Again… wut?? His English wasn’t all that great and he thought I wasn’t “understanding” him because I had to keep asking him to repeat the drug names. So frustrating. But until I can get the heart ultrasound done – and who knows when that will be – this is supposed to prevent me from dying of a stroke in the meantime.
Not exactly feeling instilled with confidence about all this because I don’t know if this Cardiologist is taking into account that I’ve had tachycardia issues since I was a young and thin 25 year old (I did tell him on Monday) or if he’s just going by the protocol for treating fat 68 year old ladies. Have any of you taken any of these meds?
casa azahar 
I have tried to reply to this three times and WordPress keeps eating the text I enter. Fuck whatever they did to the software. I’ll type something into a document and be back…
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It sounds as if he’s diagnosed you with atrial fibrillation, in which the upper chamber of the heart initiates a rapid beat often followed by a slowdown in which blood can potentially stagnate around the atrial valves enough to form the nucleus of a clot, and that’s the stroke risk and the reason for the blood thinner. But it’s not a “jesus christ you could stroke out any minute” risk, and none of my many clients with A-fib have had drama from their doctors about “start taking this medication yesterday.”
I really do hate it when doctors catastrophize and don’t engage with their patients’ personal experience and history. I mean, you’ve been mentioning the POTS as long as I’ve known you, and it seems entirely possible that’s what’s going on, unless the Holter data is conclusive (it sounds as if it’s not sufficient for a diagnosis) or the ultrasound confirms A-fib (I don’t know how that would work) or there is an increasing risk with age of stroke in POTS people. I totally don’t know, but that is what he should be discussing with you, and I suspect that your history went in one ear and out the other, just as mine has with a succession of doctors who in some cases literally shouted profanities at me about my soaring blood pressure in their offices. (Which was A Thing because of previous doctors who had berated me and shouted profanities, and refused to grasp that I had been traumatized by doctors right off the starting block when I was a toddler and re-traumatized throughout my life, and that my BP historically had dropped to normal as soon as I could get away from a medical setting. I probably should have started blood pressure drugs a few years before I did, but that behavior just made me avoid doctors.)
At the very least he should be willing to explain to you what the diagnosis is and why this is different from the POTS tachy that you’ve dealt with all your life. If it is. The edoxaban seems fairly innocuous, but frankly the flecainide sounds a bit scary, and “does not decrease the risk of death” along with the stated sides make me wonder what the urgency is, since it doesn’t seem indicated in A-fib and is contraindicated in ventricular arrhythmias… like you said, wut? I know that trying to communicate in the medical system there is a nightmare but if he won’t answer questions I hope you can find someone who will.
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Sorry Kate, thought I’d replied to this already. Almost ten days later… I still don’t know what to think. But, I AM having fewer tachycardia moments, so I dunno, maybe it’s working? I did chat with Dr A (my ex-GP now retired) and he said the treatment recommended seemed correct and he recommended I go with it. That helped me relax a bit. I guess when I get the heart ultrasound (whenever??) then there will be more info to go on in terms of cause and treatment. But I won’t see the cardiologist again unless something scary shows up. I mean… I really miss the old days when my GP and the head of Nuclear Medicine were ex-students of mine (English classes). At least I knew that I was being treated like a person, that my doctors were actually listening to me. I shudder to think what it might have been like without Ricardo and team while I was going through the whole cancer & chemo thing. Anyhow, now it’s back to waiting.
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