Comments on: An athlete’s heart?

By: David Mac

David Mac — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 14:24:06 +0000

I have been diagnosed with this - the hard way. I fainted in my hotel room at a sales meeting and hit my head hard and gave myself a concussion. I had bad vertigo as a result so I went to the ER. The ER doc took an EKG and was very concerned that I had had a heart attack. He called in a cardiologist and he dismissed it as “Athlete’s heart”. I had a follow up visit to another cardiologist, did a cardiolite stress test, saw another cardiologist specialist and the determination was “Early Repolarization (ST elevation with normally inflected T wave). My cardiologist recommended I carry this information about my condition in my wallet because as he said “If you ever become unconscious due to a car accident or the like, you are going to want the emergency responders to know this or you might not like what they do to you” The might not like part included being shocked with the paddels or even thrombolytic therapy that they do to heart attack victims.

So beware!

By: Rae

Rae — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 14:04:13 +0000

I saw a thing about that on Oprah once. I’m sure it’s nothing, most docs don’t understand a THING about athletes!

By: Danny

Danny — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 01:02:41 +0000

i’m no cardiologist, but it looks like nothing to me. (assuming you’re not having chest pain!)

By: Pamalamadingdong

Pamalamadingdong — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 00:36:33 +0000

what? that’s terrible

By: david

david — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 00:32:14 +0000

Both my sons who ran had issues with college physicals because of their athlete’s hearts. Both had the wacky test results, stress tests and then the “Oh, you’re an athlete” result. There ought to be more heart doctors who run; they’d know better.

By: ali

ali — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 21:40:29 +0000

I’ve heard of that before, someone in our group brought in their ECG, I didn’t understand it. But it had something to do with being an endurance athlete.

Don’t get stressed!

By: Debbie

Debbie — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 16:31:28 +0000

I hope everything is alright. I went through that with a different test. The waiting was murder and I nearly strangled the doctor when she came back with the negative on the follow-up and asked _me_ why we did the test in the first place.

By: 21stCenturyMom

21stCenturyMom — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 16:21:29 +0000

yikes! For what its worth a friend’s husband had one of these ‘it may be nothing - you might just be like that’ diagnoses and in fact, it was nothing. Getting from ‘what if’ to an answer was not fun, though. Try to stay calm. It’s probably just a manifestation of your extreme good health.

By: JuJuBee

JuJuBee — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 15:35:27 +0000

Good lord, between Runner’s Trots and Athlete’s Heart, I may never take up running again. Hope all is well for your stress test.