Beta Blockers

I was talking to my sister this morning and realized we’ve both been through the same thing. She had the same tests last year, possibly the same medication. Thank you, genetics. In a way this was inevitable. Better now than later.

My beta blockers started today. I assumed the effect would be immediate, that my heart rate would just drop and stay low. For the first hour or two it did the opposite. Not sure if that’s normal, but after one flight of stairs I was at 137 bpm. After four floors, 159 bpm. Last month I was climbing an average of 35 floors a day, and by the 12th floor, after a long run, I’d be at 152 bpm. Now four floors gets me higher than 35 used to. The contrast is almost funny.

Last night my mind was racing before bed, jumping between people and things I couldn’t stop thinking about. At 11, I told myself to stop and just breathe. I was asleep in ten minutes. That’s the one thing I love about most nights: I’m out within ten minutes, and I don’t surface again until the house is already awake and scrambling for school.

I’m going to stay with my dad next week. I’ve been spending too little time with him, and some days I worry I’m taking his presence for granted, that I’ll regret it once he’s gone. I wish we could take a small trip, just the two of us. It’s not that simple though. He won’t remember any of it the next day. A whole week together, and by morning it’s gone for him. So what’s the point? Except that assumes it’s only for his benefit. Maybe the memory is mine to keep. Maybe it would settle something in me even if it settles nothing in him. I just need to talk myself into it and find somewhere close enough that we don’t lose the trip to the drive. I’m going to plan something.

The sadness is fading. The loneliness isn’t, and that’s fine. I think it comes from spending the last three months obsessed with one goal, and now that it’s on pause, I feel empty and restless. Once the health stuff is sorted, hopefully within a month, I’ll get back to it. I’m not letting a bit of bad luck knock me off the path. the good news is that I will finish my book tonight! So I am going to spend tomorrow hunting for the next book. This would be my 13th book! I am so proud that I got back into reading again.

I’ve also been thinking about a week near a beach, working somewhere quiet. Maybe I take my dad along. The more I sit with the idea, the more I like it. October’s already full of travel, so maybe the last week of September. I’ll have to sort out logistics, but I think it’s doable.

Welcome to another episode of TrivialThings!, today we would look at what the beta blockers do!

Beta blockers basically tell your heart, “Easy there, tiger.” They block adrenaline, so the heart beats slower and pumps less forcefully. That’s why they’re used for high blood pressure, irregular heart rhythms, angina, migraines, and sometimes the physical side of anxiety, like a racing heart or shaky hands. They don’t remove stress, they just stop your body from staging its own action movie about it. Basically, beta blockers turn down the volume on your heartbeat. Credit goes to Sir James Black, a Scottish pharmacologist who, in the late 1950s, looked at angina patients and thought: what if we just turned adrenaline’s volume down? Building on earlier work that identified “beta receptors” as adrenaline’s control knobs, he developed propranolol in 1962. The idea was good enough to win him the 1988 Nobel Prize.

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