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I’m now extra glad I hadn’t unwittingly headed off to my cardiology revision two weeks ago because wasting time and money getting to the hospital and back yesterday without getting caught up in the tractor strike was bad enough. I had guessed that this revision was going to be the usual EKG and asking about the tachycardia. Which they did. But the doctor (another new one, I never see the same specialist twice) didn’t listen at all. He spent the entire visit typing out the report, even when I told him that that very morning I’d had a very unusual tachycardia episode that lasted about three hours. I explained that it was a condition I’ve had since my mid-twenties (he’s nodding and typing) and nobody has ever been able to tell me why it’s happening, that I’ve wondered if it is POTS but it has never been diagnosed as such. I stressed that it is very rare when it doesn’t stop within a few minutes and said that since it happened I was feeling some pain just above my left breast.
“Oh, that’s nothing, nothing to do with the arrhythmia”. His advice was that the next time I should go and get an EKG done while the tachycardia is happening so they can better judge was is causing it. WTAF? I asked him where I was supposed to get an instant EKG and he said to go to my health centre or to a private clinic. Again… wtf? I explained (again) that the episodes don’t usually last that long, and the times they have, and I was worried enough to go to emergency, they always stopped before I got in to see a doctor. So he said I could get a mobile “Kardia” heart monitor, wrote the name down for me, and said that was all he could do. He then gave me a perfunctory once over with the stethoscope and pronounced me “just fine”, printed out his report and said “see you in a year”. Except of course I doubt I will ever see this guy again.
So I dunno. Reckon this Kardia thing is worth it? It seems most home monitoring gadgets are far from reliable. Maybe I should splash out on an Apple watch instead?
casa azahar 
I’m a bit of a fan of fitness trackers like the Apple watch, but no question they are pricey and I can’t speak to the accuracy or utility of things like the heart rate monitor. Nota bene, there are off-brand trackers that cost a lot less and might get the job done. I’m thinking of one myself because in May my Fitbit, whose company was eaten by Google, has to be switched over to reporting to the Google database, and Google has become way too cavalier about giving up people’s data on request.
The thing I enjoy about trackers is the granular information you get: you can track patterns in what you do before the nights you sleep like shit vs. sleep well; you discover sometimes that certain activities are more, or less, exertion and heart training than you imagined; you start seeing patterns in things that incur a stress response. I’m waiting for the moment I have to explain to any new doctor that I am having a controlled panic attack just by being there in the office, because the watch or phone app shows normal resting heart rate while under those conditions, I’m usually running 40 beats a minute higher just sitting there. It’s amazing really how long that can linger after a strain situation. I just don’t know how it stands up to an EKG, which I’m pretty sure splits more hairs about which sinus nodes are firing and so on.
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