BPM

I was expecting to have to wait a long time until our next appointment at Children's Hospital but we got the call fairly quickly. They called me on a Friday and wanted us to bring Anna in the following Monday. We got through the weekend and I was praying that Anna would not collapse at the hospital this time! I was desperate for her to get on that treadmill to see what the heck was going on!!
We made it to Vancouver and waited anxiously in the waiting room at the cardiology clinic. They called Anna's name and brought her in to get her hooked up to all of the monitors. She was ready for the stress test. Anna was sitting on the gurney waiting to go on the treadmill. Her resting heart rate was 86. She stood up, and her heart rate jumped to 130-140 (I can't remember the exact number). I was in shock. How could her heart rate jump so high just by standing!! I guess with dysautonomia this is a pretty standard thing. She jumped on the treadmill and began to walk. She worked herself up to a slow jog and lasted for 8 minutes. Her heart rate was just under 200 BPM. As shocked as I was to see these numbers, it at least brought me some validation that she has some crazy things going on with her body! We sat down with the cardiologist again to go over a few things. He decided to put her on a low dose beta blocker to try and control her heart rate. We were happy to try anything! We left with the prescription in hand and hope that this might actually make a difference in Anna's life.