3 Month Heart Update

It has officially been three months since my diagnosis. I had another cardiologist appointment today. I have officially lost 8 lbs in the last month :) A lot of it is fluid loss as they started me on diuretics. I lost 8 lbs overnight - fastest weight loss ever!  (Except giving birth. That's pretty instant.) Plus it is now much easier to breathe, which is always nice. My hands and feet weren't swollen, so the fluid was in my lungs and chest.

I had another echocardiogram done - my third in three months. It looks like my condition is starting to improve a little bit! My ejection fraction is up to 50% now (it was 45%). My doctor is pleased, but is putting me on ACE inhibitors starting this weekend. Yay.

Oddly, I am feeling worse. That apparently is pretty normal. Usually with medical conditions you feel better when the meds are working. That is not the case with this condition. My blood pressure at the doctor's office was 108/72 and my pulse rate was 60. And that was after having walked in from outside, not while resting. I get dizzy almost every time I stand up, come close to blacking out pretty often, and randomly break out into cold sweats. My heart feels like it's pounding in my throat and I am exhausted most of the time. My doctor is pleased. Perhaps he is a bit of a sadist ;)

In other news, I have developed something called PVC - premature ventricular contraction. Basically every couple of beats, my heart contracts before it fills back up with blood. It doesn't happen all the time, but it miraculously decided to cooperate (it's obviously NOT related to my children) and show up perfectly during my echo, so they got a good picture of what's going on. Fortunately this condition is usually benign. It was interesting to watch the heart monitor. It looked like the top line on this photo, which I stole from wikipedia -

My doctor is not overly concerned about it right now as there are normal beats between the odd ones. He's having my magnesium and potassium levels checked as deficiencies in those can contribute to this condition. The medications used to treat it are beta blockers, which I am already on. It feels really weird and usually I have to lie down when I feel it, but I don't know if it is caused by me being especially tired or if it causes exhaustion on it's own.

Anyway, we're glad everything is looking ok! We were a bit nervous about the whole irregular heartbeat thing because when you feel my pulse, it feels like it's skipping heartbeats (you don't feel it in your veins because not enough blood is pumped out).