Slice of Chaotic Life

The daily life of a celibate middle-aged man.

Routine doctor appointment

Posted by Itlandm on July 5, 2012

It is one of those harmless but weird experiences: I was sitting at the doctor’s waiting room, but did not know why. OK, this is not always harmless: It might be a severe brain disorder, I guess. But in this case, it was just that the appointment was made in spring sometime and I had forgotten to include any notes in my calendar, so I did not know if it was related to the heart test in May, my ongoing pre-diabetes, a generic maintenance check, or possibly (but unlikely) some other problem which I might have had then and not now.

It turned out to be the first two. We talked about the result of the stress test, which we were both very happy about. This is the doctor who believes that almost all health problems can be run away from, in the sense that hours of exercise can solve most modern health problems. (I tend to agree to a large extent.) Now that have started adding a little jogging to my daily hour or so of walking, he is very happy. I am sure he would be even happier if I ran like a horse for two hours a day, but hopefully it won’t come to that. At least unless my exercise asthma suddenly disappears. It seems to be the only thing between me and an Olympic medal these days. ^_^

Seriously, it seems to be only weeks between each time my heart rate adjusts itself down. The heart has reasons the lungs do not know, or the other way around: In either case, they don’t coordinate their improvements. Today after I came home, I ran into the limit – or perhaps jogged into it.

Usually it has been the resting pulse that has inched down, but this time it was my exercise pulse. The pulse was perfectly normal when I put the sensors on, but it did not increase as much with activity as it used to do. This has been a trend lately, but today for the first time I ran into the exercise astma barrier – I could not jog long enough to keep my pulse in my ideal zone without triggering a low-grade asthma attack with hacking cough. I slowed down at that point, so it did not proceed to wheezing, but it is still kind of icky. I may really have to start taking asthma medication before I start exercising, or else just live with the fact that my pulse stays below 120. That isn’t exactly much of an exercise. Although I suppose I could up the time with another quarter, to an hour and a half. I was kind of hoping to exercise more in less time though.

Heart: You call this exercise? I call it [ERROR IN SARCASM DATABASE]

Lungs: Hey! Slow down there! We can’t keep up with all this hard work!

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