A Very Good-Looking Heart

I have been at the doctor all morning and it has not been a fun time.

The good news is that my heart looks pretty good. This was a concern, because I’ve been having pretty scary heart issues – the least bit of exertion has been making me feel faint and giving me thundery heart feelings and that weird pulsing vision thing that you get when your heart rate goes through the roof. So my doctor was Concerned and sent me to get an urgent ECG.

(Side note: this was not in my plans for today, and has thrown me for a loop. I have dysphoria, which essentially means I go through periods of “THIS BODY DOES NOT FEEL LIKE ME AND I DO NOT WANT YOU TO TOUCH IT PLS”, on top of my usual no-touchy issues. I have to psych myself up for doctor visits that require Touching, and often have to have the Engineer with me. Neither of those things happened today, and the tech had to touch my boobs to put the electrodes on. Not feeling super unshaky about that right now.)

Anyway. The ECG came back clear, and my doctor says my heart sounds pretty good. I still have an appointment with my cardiologist just to be safe, and orders for a bunch of blood tests to check my thyroid and several other things, but at the moment, we’re pretty sure we know what the main problem is.

It’s my muscles and nerves. My nerves aren’t transmitting properly and my muscles aren’t receiving properly, due to a whole ton of inflammation, and now they’ve essentially atrophied to the point where they can’t handle basic function very well. It’s not a fun thing to hear. And my doctor was very nice about it – it’s not because I’ve been lazy, it’s because my body has literally been breaking down. You don’t lazy yourself into “legs can’t handle the walk from the bed to the bathroom without shaking”.

So the plan from here? Essentially, exercise, but on such a gentle level that it feels ludicrous. We have an exercise bike and a set of arm pedals at home, and my doctor has told me to be sure to not do more than five minutes of walking pace exercise on each a day to start with. If I can get to the Engineer’s parents’ place to swim a couple of times a week, that would be great, but I’m not to push myself. I could literally exercise myself into an adrenal crash and nobody wants that.

So that’s the plan for now. Five minutes of gentle exercise to help my muscles recover and rebuild. Maybe swim. Get on top of the new medication blend, which is the really hard bit. Avoid more adrenal crashes, because they make the muscle problems worse. We’ll see how it goes. I am being cautiously optimistic. And also tired.