I had another visit with my cardiologist this week.  Since I am still having symptoms (chest pain, chest tightness, and feeling out of breath), he decided to send me for more tests.  He wants to check to see if there may be fluid around my heart.  I went for blood work – he ordered BNP (B-type natriuretic peptide) and BMP (basic metabolic panel).  I also had to get another echocardiogram of my heart.  Hopefully, I will have results within the next few days.  It was really kind of creepy watching my heart pump on the ultrasound machine.  I kept wondering if it was pumping normal (the echo tech is not allowed to give results) and watching my valves move was just mesmerizing.  The echo tech was extremely friendly and pointed out parts of my heart as she went along once she learned that I once wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon and had a pre-med background.  I kept wondering in the back of my mind if she was being so overly nice because she saw something bad on the ultrasound.  But I am just normally paranoid about my health nowadays anyway.

My cardiologist decided to also increase my Carvedilol, although I forgot to ask why.  Normally, I take one pill in the morning and one pill in the evening.  He increased it to 1.5 pills in the evening, so I am breaking them in half.  Luckily, that prescription was already filled for a 3 month supply, so I have plenty for now.  I told him that I’m still having mild abdominal pain and I’ve been getting severe headaches, so he said I should schedule appointments with my GI doctor and my PCP.  I scheduled the GI appointment for next week.  In the past 3 days, I’ve also had heartburn, and I haven’t eaten anything different.  One night I had pretty severe heartburn, so I took a Nitroglycerin tablet.  The heartburn went away.  My cardiologist thinks the chest pain and tightness I’ve been having are skeletal muscle.  But I wasn’t having the heartburn when I had my appointment, so that will be something new to bring up to him at my next visit.  Heartburn is definitely not skeletal.

I’ll report back on my test results as soon as I have them.