Athletic Pulse

Doctors. They all presumably have, if not the same then similar training, and access to pretty much the same information. Yet they draw different conclusions. What's up with that?

My pulse has always been on the low side, hovering around 48, 49, 50 beats per minute. It's been that way all my life, so far as I recall. My old doctor was okay with that, but out of curiously I asked when we should be concerned. "If it's regularly at 40 or below," he explained. So, all right. I'm all right.

Yet that physician retired, and I transferred to a doctor he recommended. He seems like a good guy too. But when my heartbeat was 48 last month he did the old slow head shake tsk tsk. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Oh, 48, that's too low. Unless you're an athlete?" He queried.

Even I laughed out loud at that, as did most of you. Don't deny it. "Well, are you?" He persisted.

"No. I walk 45 - 50 minutes most days, a brisk walk mind you, but I'm no athlete."

The Doc har-umphed. "We must keep an eye on that." He assured me I'm in no danger, yet he let slip the word 'pacemaker'. "If this keeps up, at some point we'll have to consider it."

Be all that as it may, why is one physician unconcerned with a pulse of 48 and the next one, a colleague of the one who retired, tsk tsking me?

I don't get it. But I'm not a doctor. I'm also not an athlete.

A Medical Opinion

As I sat tying my shoes across the examination room from my doctor yesterday I asked, "So, Doc, what's the verdict?"

"You're old and fat," he answered.

I responded, "I get told that for free a dozen times a day. Why do I have to pay a $320 office visit to hear it from you?"

"To make it official," he explained gruffly.

My doctor never did and never would have put it that way. My manner of interpreting the conversation is simply funnier. Oh, he definitely said I was old and fat, in so many words. But he was much more diplomatic and charitable, properly mixing in all the old saws about continuing to exercise and eating better (and less), cushioned in the right sense of calm urgency. 

Perhaps that's why it's $320 for the office visit. I believe most of us would measure our words much more carefully for that kind of money.

Marty and the humorous EKG

So I was sitting in an examination room at my Doctor's office last Friday as he listened to my heart. He held the stethoscope in one spot on my chest and listened. He moved it across my sternum and listened more closely. He asked me to breathe deeply, and listened more. He told me to hold my breath, and listened intently. He then put the stethoscope down, and went to the door. I heard him say, "Nurse, please bring the EKG cart".
On his return I asked with no small concern, "Why do you want the EKG cart?"
"Well, your pulse is a bit slow. Not dangerously slow, but enough that I'd like to do an EKG," he explained.
"Okay, fine," I replied, relieved. "But could I ask you something?
"Of course."
"Maybe next time you do that, tell me what's up before asking for the EKG machine?"
He smiled sheepishly and said, "Yes, sorry. I should have done that."
No real worries on my part. He's a great doctor and I'm very glad to have him. Good thing too that I discovered him after the Obamacare mandates, because that means I can actually keep him. It was simply a bit of a shock to hear the order for the EKG without knowing why, that's all. But I think we both saw it as the humorous inadvertence that it was, and nothing more.
The EKG was good by the way. I do have a functioning heart.