from left field

*wham*

I'm still coming to accept it. But it was a surprise to me.

I was still having high blood pressure, fast heart beat. Then chest pain started about two weeks ago. It feels like a pulled muscle across my chest where my heart is. So I went to the cardiologist yesterday. I haven't had good luck with them in the past, but I have to get something to help.

First of all, he was "I wouldn't have put you on that beta blocker," made me feel a bit at ease. Then as he was listening to my heart, he said to his intern "do you hear that prolapse?"

What?

Yup, mitral valve prolapse. Pretty pronounced. So I immediately had to do a stress test. I did very well on that, so it doesn't look like I'm in any immediate danger.

But the pronounced flutter with the chest pain isn't good either.

As we were wrapping up our plans for the immediate future, he mentioned that this could be from my celiac.

*thud* I've never heard of it.

So doing some quick literature searches said it could happen in conjunction with Celiac Artery Compression Syndrome. Basically it means that when I eat gluten, there's abdominal pain from compression of abdominal arteries. Well, that happens.

In the immediate future, I need an echo to see how much blood is seeping backwards (not sure if they're going to look for Celiac Artery Compression Syndrome). I'm supposed to cut back the caffeine, and not push myself too hard.

I think I'm more bummed about the caffeine bit. Since I don't know what (if anything) needs to be done, I'll focus on what I can do.

At least I don't have to quit alcohol too. Thank goodness I had a bottle of the cat label red wine to drink from last night.