Not my usual cardiologist

The Cederberg Wilderness Area

I had left my home monitor device for my ICD in New Zealand. From previous experience I knew that if it couldn't connect to the Internet the battery would keep getting run down really fast, and that it would be of little use. So I had decided to leave it behind when I travelled to South Africa.

This mean that my ICD wouldn't be sending reports of my heart rhythm through to my monitoring team in New Zealand.

After my second ventricular tachycardia (VT) event, I sent an email copy of my Fitbit ECG to the cardiac nurse in New Zealand. She advised me to see a cardiologist if I could.

Seeking medical attention

I searched online for an electrophysioligist in Cape Town who could do an ICD device check of my model of ICD. It turns out there are only three electrophysiologists in Cape Town - a city with as many people as the whole of New Zealand.

I reached out to one who had good reviews on Google (oh the irony) and asked if I could make an appointment or if I should go to the emergency department of the hospital where his office was located.

I also spoke with my cousin who is an ICD technician for another brand of ICD. She said the cardiologist I contacted was really good, and gave them a call to put in a good word for me, as she knew the team there through her line of work.

His office came back to me and I got an appointment for Tuesday.

The appointment

My dad drove me to the appointment. The doctor's office was really well equiped. A technician scanned my device, and confirmed that I had had 2 VT events. The cardiologist came and conferred with the technician. They gave me an echo to check my heart function while I was there.

It was quite amazing service to have such a decent work up all within 30 minutes.

The doctor told me that my heart was very irritated. He told me that I am not supposed to fly while my heart is unstable. This freaked me out a bit, as that meant I couldn't come home until things calmed down.

He told me to double my Amiodarone dose, go for some blood tests and come back in a week's time.

He also told me that I should have an ablation, and that I was too young to be on Amiodarone indefinitely.

The follow up

I still felt a lot of palpitations in that next week. If felt like the Amiodarone wasn't working. I was extremely nervous that I would be stuck in another country indefinitely.

At my follow up appointment I only saw the ICD technician. He checked my device again, did an ECG and spoke with the cardiologist.

I was cleared to fly back home. Thank goodness.

At least the stress of the experience was reduced by the fact that I did have travel insurance. I will do a seperate blog to review my travel insurance experience in full.