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?