I visited my cardiologist on Thursday.  After reviewing the 48 hour Holter, the stress test data, and everything else, the conclusion is that this just isn’t a big deal.  The notion is that if you have a high number of ‘premature beats’ that ablation is probably justified.  High number in this case means something approaching 20%.  I have nowhere near that number.

So the decision is that I will just keep taking Atenolol.  It does not seem to disagree with me at all and it should keep me from having these super fast heart rate episodes which are really the only dangerous symptom of this issue.

Doc says I should just go on with my life, see you in a year, call if anything happens in the meantime.  His guess is that this might have been caused by some virus that left a scar when I was young.  Not unusual at all.

I figure that having a cardiologist and taking heart medication are two signs you’re old.  Even if it’s for an issue I’ve had since I was around 16 🙂

It was a good day for reading under the apple tree.

Yesterday I did the treadmill stress test.  Everything was steady while climbing the hill.  After the cooldown the flibidy flobity started up.  I skip a beat every 3 or 4 or more.  That’s the usual thing – as opposed to the super fast beats from the other day.  The hope is that this is two aspects of the same thing.  The good news is that the irregular beat is easy to trigger.  Well, good in that if we do ablation it should be easy to tell if it was successful.