A minor complication

About 4 weeks ago I started to have a few heart palpitations where it felt like I had a run of three or four heart beats in rapid succession. It's quite a hard feeling to explain but you'll know if you ever have one. I started getting these about three or four times an hour. It didn't have any other effects, no rapid heartbeat in general, no breathlessness, blood pressure normal. Both my Mom and Dad suffer from Atrial Fibrillation so I know a little bit about what to look for.

I mentioned this to my consultant on my visit before last ( 5th February ) and she said she wanted to get it checked out to make sure there was not some underlying heart problem that might affect what Chemotherapy I can have. That day I had an ECG and a chest x-ray. These have subsequently come back fine but as the palpitations do not occur regularly it's pretty lucky to catch one on an ECG.

Between then and my last visit ( 26th February ) I had a nasty bout of flu but the palpitations settled down to a point where I couldn't say for sure if I'd had one at all in a day. Then they came back again last Saturday almost as bad as before ( and I've got as filthy cold now - coincidence probably ). Now I am settling back again.

To get to the bottom of this I'm going in to hospital on Monday 3rd March, ostensibly to have a Central Venous Catheter (CVC), or Central Line fitted, but whilst I am there I will also have an echocardiogram ( an ultrasound of the heart) and a 24 hour heart monitor fitted to try to catch a palpitation and find out what it is. I'll be in for two or three days.

It's been a bit of a blow to have this added complication at this stage in the proceedings and to be honest it has shaken me a bit, but there are lots of causes of this sort of thing and most are fairly minor so I hope this won't affect how my treatment for the MCL proceeds.

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