one and a quarter milligrams better

A brief update for any new readers. A sort of 'Previously, on scribblanity...', followed by the current situation. It may be interesting. But it's probably not.

I am currently waiting for a heart reboot procedure, called a cardioversion, due to my heart deciding that sinus rhythm was a bit boring and going completely off piste with some sort of free-form jazz rhythm... i.e. very little rhythm.
Oh, OK, if you insist... a lot of different ones then.

When it started off, it scared me, but it has settled in to my mind as an inconvenience that I'm waiting on getting sorted out now, rather than the DEATH IS IMMINENT it felt like at first.

It only needs a climb up the stairs for me to turn into what I imagine Usain Bolt was like when he crossed the 100 metres finish line; sweaty, with accompanying racing heart rate and breathlessness.

Note: How old are my references? I'll just check when it was that Usain Bolt was winning everything... NO, DON'T DO THAT!
Oh, look, Wikipedia...

Blimey, it was 2009 when he set the 9.58 World Record. Oh, there's a list of when all the different records were set, and links to the athletes bios...

OK, where were we? (reader sees seamless continuation of post, knows nothing of the two day gap here)

Ah, yes. This all started June 2023, and I have now had three appointments for having the cardioversion procedure postponed, all due to the pre-op blood tests showing unsatisfactorily high potassium levels. In the meantime, I've been under doctors orders, taking it easy and not doing my normal weekly 150-200km cycling - or anything else very much either. The doctor said don't do anything strenuous, don't stress the heart.

Subsequently, I'm feeling like a sloth. A big one. But not hanging off a tree.

It's a long story, and I don't want to write a long story right now, so jumping to today I do have the fourth appointment date at last, having supplied a blood sample which passed their criteria (I read that potassium was water soluble, so I just made sure to drink extra water. Success!)

What did get noticed at that time was that I apparently had an unusually high blood pressure reading, so a nurse fitted a portable monitor for a day to get a range of readings, taken every fifteen minutes over six hours. And she concluded, on downloading it that afternoon, yes, 23 red zone numbers meant it was quite high all day.

So I had a follow-up appointment a week later with the doctor to get to the bottom of it.

I'd not seen this doctor at the medical practice before, and when I got in to see him, I knew why he was running 30 minutes late already at ten in the morning. We went through the story so far, he stopped me at various points, asked questions, explained his reasoning for asking them, tapped away at his three screened computer and showed me the figures on his screens, sat back and thought about his answers before giving them, listened to everything I had to say like he had all day. A proper consultation.

This is not how a GP appointment in the NHS in the UK normally goes these days. You have ten minutes, but it normally feels like the doctor thinks it would be much better if you had thirty seconds. They're more worried about filling the quotas of how many of you they see rather than how you are. It reminded me of the time doctors apparently had for you when I was growing up in the 1970's. Just no lollipop afterwards.

"OK, I think we'll strengthen up your beta blocker dosage," he said (and I knew so much about it now, I agreed with him), "and I see no reason you can't get back on your bike and do some exercise. Just be sensible and don't deliberately go for lung-busting sprints up the hills. Is there anything else today?"

This is good news. Although it does annoy me greatly that any of the other doctors I had seen in the last nine months could have made this decision. But suddenly, just one tablet that is 1.25 milligrams greater in dose than I was on has already made me feel a lot less fragile. So much so, I went out in the garden yesterday and trimmed some hedges for three hours.  

And now I'm just knackered, because although my heart felt a lot stronger, I do have MS, and that sort of effort always makes me crash, even when I'm feeling good. 

This has been the case for seventeen years. I am not a quick learner apparently.