Saturday 11 January 2014

Diagnosis: Athlete


On Tuesday night I ended up in Emergency...pretty impressive, I made it a whole week of this year before any hospital visits!  But then this happened.  Basically, it was because my resting
I had a lot of time for non smiling selfies
heart rate was 36 (beats per minute).  For the unitiated, an average healthy adult's resting heart rate is between 60-100.  A professional athlete's minimum heart rate is generally 40 (as a minimum!)  When I was morbidly obese, mine was 80-90 I think.  Since becoming fit, mine is now 51-52.  So when I discovered mine was 36??  It was extremely concerning.  The world record I think is 27 (of a healthy person).  To add to that, I'd had some minor pain around my chest/stomach that day, a couple of other concerning things and was just generally not feeling 100%, so in hospital I was.


After testing, discussions and a lot of prodding from the hot runner doctor, (I know!) :)  they gave me my diagnosis:

"You are an athlete and very fit."

I am not joking.  This was my actual diagnosis.  I still can't believe it.  18 months ago I was lying there in a hospital bed just a few beds away, being told that I was so seriously unwell that I could have died...and then 18 months later, my diagnosis is one of pure health and fitness?  Who gets told that they're "an athlete"?  I never imagined that morbidly obese, pack a day smoker, unwell Kate from 18 months ago would, that's for sure.

As much as it's awesome, I'm still really concerned and have booked my GP to investigate it further / look into it a bit more.  It's so low :(  Surely it's not normal?  I know that I'm super fit.  I can literally feel my cardiovascular system being healthy (I know that sounds weird, but I can).  I can run for 30km without stopping.  I can sometimes climb a mountain and do stuff without
Adding to my collection of hospital tags :/
breaking a sweat.  But 36bpm?  It was 36-38 I guess and I saw it as low as 35, and unofficially a couple of days later I saw it at 33.  I usually Google stuff like this but I'm a bit uneasy so I'm just going to speak to my GP.  I wasn't allowed to donate blood on Thursday night either because of this.

But apart from being a bit nervous and feeling a bit unwell for a couple of days, I had a pretty cool week of having that diagnosis!  Probably the best diagnosis you could ever have.


1 comment:

  1. Mine's in the low 50's now and same thing has happened to me with the drop, but 36 does seem very low. Hope you're okay and it's not something other than being the "super fit athlete"!

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