I was doing so well...

[citoyenlambda]

I spent a few months barely thinking about my body. It vanished as suddenly as it came. In retrospect, it felt so good not to worry.

My mom's been dealing with atrial fibrillation lately and regularly takes her pulse with a blood pressure machine. These infernal contraptions :(

Seeing her take it so often triggered my deepest fear, "and what about me?" So I've begun taking it again. At first, just for "fun". Now I check it numerous times a day.

For one, my pulse is slow. Around 55 or so if I had to average it. It can go from 50 to 60. People tell me it's a "good thing" and indeed it can be a good thing, in athletes and healthy young people. Except I'm sedentary and obviously I'm not healthy...I mean, I'm not, right? So this number in fact spells catastrophe.

Then, my pressure. I get numbers like 118/65. That's good, right? Except of course I learned about this thing called pulse pressure, and the wider it is the worse it is, and of course the normal pulse pressure is 40, and that's a 53 right there...must mean my arteries are in terrible shape, rigid, and my heart is gonna give out any second.

I hate hearts. Seriously. I hate hearing them or feeling them beat. I hate seeing them. I hate thinking about them. One of the most important organs in my body is one I have little control over, it's an automatic pump, and I probably won't be able to tell something's wrong before the pipes are clogged or something else keeps it from doing its job. I don't trust hearts. They seem so fickle.

If I had my way I would pay for a battery of tests. Unfortunately I don't have the money and public healthcare won't do EKGs or X-Rays or whatever else they do to 27 years olds, even if he is a bit rotund (maybe 15 pounds to lose) and doesn't exercise, especially since I don't have any symptoms whatsoever other than weird numerical readings. I don't feel lightheaded. I don't have cold hands. I never fainted once in my life. I'm not overly tired. I can jog a mile (but just one) if I pace myself, but rapidly see improvement if I move regularly, so I'm not exercise intolerant, just in bad shape.

I want to go back to even a month ago. I thought I was free. But I remembered I have a heart.

[Halle0587]

I’m not one to talk, I have my own set back, but maybe come at this from another direction. Give yourself some grace and tell yourself today and moving forward I’ll only check it twice s day, morning and night no matter the readings. Then, when you feel ready in a week or so, go to once a day, then cut it back to every other day but turning it around so you don’t know the number. You’ve done it, now move on with the day. This way you break yourself if the habit.
I did that with googling, although I had a major set back last night and googled. It lasted almost two months though and before that I wasn’t having a flare up so I wasn’t googling. Just food for thought.

[budgie1979]

I tend to have a low resting pulse myself (about 55-60 sitting on the couch in the evening, but can dip into the upper 40s when I sleep), and have had my share of worries about it. I've mentioned it to my doctor several times, and he's never been concerned about it. EKG has always been normal, and I don't have any symptoms that would indicate a problem, like lightheadedness, fainting, etc. I do run and do other cardio exercise, but even during my "off" periods my HR trends low. Weirdly, my maximum HR is on the high side for someone my age--I've seen it get up to 200 at the end of a hard race. So, I dunno...hearts (and bodies in general) are weird and they don't always play by the "rules".

If you're able to jog a mile without stopping, you really aren't in as bad shape as you think. When I was your age, I couldn't even do that--it took me months to be able to jog for 15 minutes straight. One thing that I've found is that making sure I exercise regularly is super beneficial to dealing with heart anxiety and learning to trust my body again. I feel like I can't actually be dying of heart failure (or most things I'm worried about) if I'm able to run or bike for 30 minutes 3-4 times a week.