[Cake]

Hey guys!

I thought I'd let you know how I'm going with my heart symptoms. Today I finally saw my GP (my regular doctor, you US RSDers call them PCPs) for the first time since wearing the holter monitor a few weeks ago.

She had a look at all the results and told me that within that 24 hour period, my heart rate went from 50 bpm pretty much straight up to 160 bpm numerous times for no apparent reason, such as in the middle of the night when I was asleep. That’s a fair range when you’re snoozing!

When I had the holter monitor on I’d had to keep track of when I noticed any palpatations etc but my GP looked at all that info and said there was no obvious pattern that linked my activities to what my heart was doing. So it doesn’t make much sense. But the good thing is there’s no arrythmia- even though the speed varies so much, the beats themselves are regular and I’m not missing any.

So the next step is to go on beta blockers. This’ll help even out my heart rate so it doesn’t go from one extreme to the other. I’ll start on 1/2 a tablet for a while and see if that helps.

I’m still waiting to see my pain specialist and we’re hoping he may be able to shed a bit more light on why this is going on and how it may be linked to my RSD or my medications. If he can’t, then my PCP will do more tests or send me on to a specialist who can work me out!

Feeling like I suddenly can’t get a breath in, or feeling my heart thumping so fast it’s going to come out of my chest, is a daily issue at the moment and I hate to admit it, but it does worry me. I’m a tad over it already! I’m still dealing with the itching issue every night and it may be that the two problems are linked. But my doctor said it’s ok for me to keep taking the phenergan (antihistimine) for the itching until my pain specialist can take a look at me.

If all this (the itching and heart rate issues) is my body saying it doesn’t like the oxycontin anymore, I won’t be happy, as that’s the only medication I get any decent pain relief from, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We’ll just take it one step at a time and hope these beta blockers do their job.

Thanks to everyone for their support and feedback so far. I'll let you know how this progresses.

x Kate