I have some news to share, but it’s not all good.

Last Thursday, I went to the VA clinic where my primary care provider is, for a routine physical. Many of the results of that physical were good – my weight and cholesterol are both down, and so is my blood pressure. My A1C (a measure of diabetic risk) was reduced. All of this was, to the best of my knowledge, because of my increasing the amount of (and variety of) vegetables in my diet.

However, there were some things that rang alarm bells. The first and greatest was that when the Nurse Practitioner taking the place of the normal Primary Care physician in my clinic put his stethoscope to my chest to listen to my heart – he freaked out!

He believed that he heard something called an atrial fibrillation, which is an abnormal heart beat in the top two chambers of the heart. He asked for my consent to run additional tests, which included both an EKG and an echo-cardiogram, and after I’d agreed to the tests and they’d been run, they confirmed what he’d originally heard on the stethoscope.

Right now, I’m wearing a device that is designed to to a long-term EKG while mounted to my chest. It is supposed to run for at least 3 days.

He ordered the nearest VA pharmacy to overnight ship a prescription to me that may help reset my heart rhythm. If it succeeds, no further intervention will be needed. If it fails, I’ll need to follow up with a cardiac surgeon, and have a long discussion with that person about what my Living Will and Advanced Directive will allow him to do.