Murmur

Last Thursday, I went to the doctor's office to follow up on some blood work that I had done for an annual physical. My blood and urine all came back fine with no major worries, which was a relief because I had noticed some floaty bits in my urine when I handed over my sample. The doctor had no idea what they could be, but he didn't seem concerned about them.

I then preceded to tell my doctor that I'm training for a marathon in October and I've noticed that when I run for a long time, I get really wheezy afterwards and sound like Darth Vader. My doctor said I might have asthma, so he spent a long time listening to my lungs.

While he was listening to my lungs, he noticed that I have a heart murmur. This kind of freaked me out because I have never heard anything or worried about my heart not being in great shape. Most heart murmurs are innocent, but then I'm a borderline hypochondriac so of course I started to worry.

The only good thing that came out of this doctor's appointment is that he said since I am an athlete, he wanted to do a series of tests that will investigate what could be the matter with my heart. My doctor said he used to be the doctor to all of the sports teams at the University of Connecticut, so he is used to working with athletes and running these types of tests all the time. Despite feeling very alarmed by the prospect of more tests and possibly something horrible being wrong with me, I loved the athlete compliment. I just didn't tell him that I'm only a really really slow athlete :)

In addition to doing a breath test that did determine I have asthma, I also had an ECG which proved that my heart is working well electrically-wise. This is good news. I go next Tuesday to have a echocardiogram done, which will determine whether there is any valve damage or anything else wrong with my heart causing the murmur. Fingers crossed this will come back clear and there is nothing wrong with me and I can resume training for the marathon again without worrying whether me having a hard time running is because of a heart about to implode or me just being a fat ass.