Saturday, January 20, 2007

Health issues

I went to see a doctor this Friday, a cardiologist.

She took the stethoscope and listened to my heart. Then rushed out of the door and came back to call me along to "try to do a quick test". The test turned out to be something that has to do with ultrasound (I won't even pretend I can tell it's name or precise function of the machine that did it) and after 10 minutes the doctor had a confirmation for her suspicion. The valve that sits in the heart in front of the aorta is supposed to have three blades, mine has only two. A fairly common condition people are born with, apparently. Additional tests will have to be taken, of course, but the doctor operating the diagnostics machine shared her opinion.

Approximately half a year ago my wife started to feel pain in her right knee. Up to the point where every step was accompanied with a slight cracking noise and caused her serious pain. She, of course, went to see a doctor who claimed that a non-prescription joint-strengthening drink every night and some spinning (!) would be all that was needed. She refused to believe, sought a second opinion, had a surgery (apparently, a piece of bone had come loose in the knee) and is already feeling better, thank you.

So why am I writing this in my blog? Well, for once I feel pretty strongly about not being to do a MTB race ever again. But above that, I have had _tw0_ thorough medical checkups within last 6 years, both of which gave me clean papers. Knowing admittedly very little about medicine, I refuse to believe that something a specialist could spot within minutes would have been impossible to find out during those checks. Both of these checkups were performed by the local Medicover branch. And the first doctor my wife talked to was also from Medicover.

Hadn't I had an arrhythmia and talked to a doctor, I could have collapsed on the first race in the spring. I don't want to think about what a loose piece of bone does to a knee under regular spinning exercises.

Sure, nobody got hurt, but this is yet another example of people not doing their job properly (have a post forming in my head about that).

Hope you guys are fine!

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