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.