A Good Day!

I had an appointment to see my consultant at the local hospital today.

I was 50 minutes late going in, but then got a full 30+ minutes with the consultant, and if he was giving everyone the same level of attention then I'm not complaining that he was running late!

I got the outcome of all the tests that had been done since I had the blackout almost 6 months ago.

I have been diagnosed with Wenckenbach's phenomenon (aka Type I Mobitz - Type 1 Second-degree AV block), note that the Wiki article says - "This is almost always a benign condition for which no specific treatment is needed".This coupled with the prostate medication that I was on was the cause of the blackout, and now that I am no longer on the medication, all is well.

I missed 3 heartbeats during the 48  hour ECG recording, that's 3 out of over 200,000 to put it in perspective! You can't blame my GP for prescribing the medication - it was an undiagnosed, asymptomatic condition not normally found in someone of my advanced years!, or to put it another way, I have the heart condition of a much younger man :)

I have been cleared to drive again, I went in with an A4 sheet of questions about how things could affect me in the future, the only thing I can't do is go back on the prostate medication!

Dr Wenckebach was a very clever man - he identified this condition (in the 19th Century) before the invention of the ECG from watching the pulse in the neck of patients. Dr Mobitz then came along and identified what was going on once there was an ECG to see with. So they both have the condition named after them, but I'd say Dr Wenckeback was the smarter as he managed to identify it without the technology.