20 May 2005

J. went to the doctor today for the first time in years; certainly over a decade. Thought it would just be a quick getting up to date, BP check, tetanus shot, blood work, whaterver. But yesterday he had a bit of a scare (that I didn't hear about until today) where his heart was racing at about 180 beats per minute for a brief period. So instead of even getting a full physical, he got an ekg, an appointment with a cardiologist on Monday (with a guarantee that he'll be wearing a Holter monitor to watch his heart for 24 hours), and a prescription for a beta-blocker. He is not a happy camper right now. So they'll try to figure out why he had the arrythmia, but more than likely the episode won't repeat itself for the monitor. He'll probably wind up doing a stress test as well. All of this is a little hard to swallow -- at 38 he's not wanting to hear about stuff like this, and I'll bet he's wishing he hadn't said anything to the doc. For my part, I'm glad they're being thorough and checking this out, and I'm trying not to get too worked up about it at the same time. Could be a real blessing that it happened as it did the day before his appointment -- if it had been a week ago, he probably wouldn't have mentioned it. Always something to be grateful for.