Oh the irony....

john979

You are lucky. I was just diagnosed with a leaky mitral valve...

swampy1970

99% O2 might not sound like pneumonia but from what I read neither does a peak flow reading consistantly over 700. I'm slowly feeling better - but not to where I'm going to be on the bike anytime soon I think, which is a bummer since my friends are coming over from England for the Deathride soon....

I do believe the Doc is going to have to earn his money on this one. It's about time him and I became better 'aquainted'. Afterall, he did say he wanted to spend some more time talking about bikes and I need to talk about being borderline anemic too. I gotta wonder whether drinking the two small vats of coffee (about 72oz of colombia's finest strong stuff) was destroying any hope of absorption of any vitamin or mineral. LOL

swampy1970

Ouch. All the best with that one John. My dad suffered from that for quite a while but treatment back in England wasn't the best - NHS being what it is (I guess I really shouldn't complain about Kaiser too much after being on the NHS for years....)

swampy1970

Champions!

Beat Chelsea in the Premiership now we beat Chelsea in the UEFA Champions League final.....

Life is a little happier!

swampy1970

So one week after going to the ER and being told that "you have a pneumonia type of infection" I sent my Doc a message via their online messaging system asking for his "thoughts" on the matter as I don't really feel that much better after finishing the antibiotics and steroids...

... and then he came back with the reply. Well, actually, your x-ray was clear... I think we'll need you back for more tests (Pulmonary Function test and perhaps and EHCO) to try and figure out what's going on.

Nice to know that two Docs can look at the same x-ray and see two completely different things.

Where's that "banging your head against the wall" emoticon when you need it the most?

Sillyoldtwit

Here you go Swampy.

__________________

Fday

Well, the echo seems like a good start to figuring out this problem. Not sure you will learn much from the PFT's, but it is not unreasonable to do. You need to find someone who is interested in finding the answer. Sounds like you might finally have someone who is finally paying attention.

swampy1970

Well, I got my appointment for the PFT - July 5th. I guess I'm supposed to "get better" by then.... They won't do an echo until the results from the PFT are in.

Needless to say I'll be checking with the medical center on a daily basis to see if there are any cancellations/openings for tests. The Doc said that would be the only way to get in any sooner.

However, if things stay the way they are right now and I got to wait until July then there'll be no fun in Markleeville for me this year, which double sucks as I have a bunch of friends coming over from England that I used to race with.

Fday

Well, you can come up and hang out at the PC booth.

swampy1970

LOL

swampy1970

Frank,

You mentioned earlier in the thread about "getting a second opinion". Given that I'm fairly neive/uneducated when it comes to the good ol' American healthcare system, how does one go about this?

Is there anywhere in the Bay Area that you'd recommend for cardio/pulmonary testing. I was thinking about looking at UC Davis, which is not to far from where I am.

Fday

Here is where I would start. I would ask your physician. Tell him that you have been talking with one or several physicians on the internet, who are also experienced cyclists/athletes about this problem and they think this is clearly not an "ordinary" situation and that the work-up seems entirely too casual. You would like to get a second opinion. Could he refer you to someone in the system that you could see in a timely manner (see below for the type of "specialist" I would ask for).

Otherwise, I think UC Davis would be a good place to go. I think I would want to see an internist who is also an experienced runner/cyclist or a sports medicine doc who is also an internist. Perhaps you can pay for that then take the recommendations back to Kaiser so the workup doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

I simply don't see what they are going to learn from a PFT test when your problem is so intermittant, unless you are having the problem when you have the test, which is unlikely. The diagnostic problem from my perspective is to explain both the sudden severity and intermittantness (combined with previous high measured lung flow rates which doesn't sound like asthma to me). I would start with the heart, not the lungs but I am not your doctor.

john979

I agree with Frank. Do you have any power meter data? I noticed that when my heart valve problems started, my watts per beat dropped 20% within a couple of weeks. Such a power drop I had never seen before under any conditions and that's when I immediately called the doctor.

swampy1970

My Doc was pretty open yesterday about how he's completely baffled but also pointed out that it's "Kaiser policy" to do a PFT before an echo, hence the echo cannot be ordered before a PFT. Why, I have no idea...

My wife has a friend who's worked at Kaiser as a nurse for many years and we're going to have a chat over the weekend about exactly how to involve "member services" to get things taken care of sooner rather than later. But I think I'm just going to give UCD a call and at the very least get a cost. I know their sports dept does VO2 max testing and all that good stuff and it was cheaper than what I thought it'd be....

The one thing that intregues me now is that my voice has been 'jacked' for the past couple of weeks, almost to the point of going out. Even with the antibiotics they put me on last week, that didn't improve.

Thinking back over the past year, I've often wondered why despite improving, I've not improved as much as I thought I would - in comparison to how I improved due to training when I used to race. Progression was there - but it was slower and to be honest I've always been pretty good at sports that were pretty tough aerobically. I was asked to go swim for one of the better clubs in England (Wigan Wasps) when I was 12, represented the towns schools in cross country running and track at 16 and was pretty handy on a bike too up until my mid 20's. So recently, busting my ass for over 2 years and still only managing to muster enough pace up hills to match people who don't win 4th Cat races was becoming a little hard to swallow. The past few months saw some nice gains but maybe that's another story. Maybe I've had issues this past year or so and didn't know it.

John,

I don't have any power meter data, but then again if punch in some numbers into analytical cycling for the climbs, then numbers come out to between 340 and 380 watts - and the climb near here that I basically live on during training takes about 45 minutes and I do it a few times. So to go from that to stuggling to walk across the parking lot at a normal pace is about where I'm at. That said I have felt somewhat better the past couple of days... I haven't touched the bike the past few weeks.