I had a doctor’s appointment today in Halifax. I had to go into the office because I needed a pap test. Since I was going into the office I had wanted to talk to him about the racing heart/high Heart Rate, dizziness, and all the other symptoms that I have been having since earlier this year. I was a bit concerned he might not take it seriously, but I needn’t have worried because the happened right there in the office as he was watching. I mentioned it just a few minutes before it happened and he asked what my Fitbit Versa lite said my heart rate was. It said 121, he checked with one of the finger pulse ox monitors and it said 125.

After the pap test, he handed me my bottoms and asked me to wiggle into them if I could without sitting up and left for a moment. I wiggled into them and called him back in and he then checked my Fitbit and it said 80 and his pulse ox monitor said 84. He then had me stand right up. It took about 45 seconds but I started getting dizzy. He checked again and my pulse was 125, he had me continue to stand for 5 more minutes while we discussed other symptoms and he checked again and I was 143.

He asked if this happened a lot and I said often. Basically I noticed it sometime after my car accident and it got worse about March or April until it was several times a day that it would happen. Interestingly enough it’s happened to me before. It’s been happening off and on for years and years. He said this was not normal and indicates something really is wrong. So he wants me to get blood work to see what it comes up with, in the meantime, he’s going to refer me to a cardiologist and is hoping they will set up a monitor to monitor my heart for a few days to see if they can diagnose something.

While writing this I decided to do some searches on my blog for similar symptoms and found a bunch of stuff. I actually mentioned the symptoms in a post back in February of this year, and I mentioned it as far back as this post in May 2013. I mention headaches, nausea, and dizziness or vertigo and throwing up and trips to the ER for fainting or falling.

I remember going to physio and looked it up and I ended up in physical therapy at the Atlantic Balance and Dizziness Center in 2013 for what they thought might be benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, which they could not definitively diagnose as I did not have nystagmus (repetitive, uncontrolled movements of the eye), which I mention in this post in March 2013. I am wondering now if what I was experiencing back then is the same thing as now.

I don’t remember what tests they did at the time. I have been trying to figure it out by going back through my posts from early 2013 but I can’t find any specifics, I am sure they did some though. I do talk about “brain fog” or concentration issues/confusion. I also talk about poor sleep or insomnia, fatigue, constant pain, and even chest pain. I would not have had any sort of Fitbit or anything at the time though so my heart rate would have gone unnoticed if it was elevated at any point (ie sitting, standing, etc.) and if they didn’t specifically check it then it would have gone unnoticed as well. I can’t honestly remember if they would have or not.

Either way, I think that I am getting somewhere with this finally. Considering it’s been at least 7 years according to those posts. I didn’t look much at the years in between but I know that I have been experiencing a lot of these symptoms throughout at one time or another, and sometimes they would be worse than others. It’s got me a bit intrigued and I am hoping that COVID won’t get in the way of a diagnosis, but I am scared it might.

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