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Just wanted to add this experience from myself.
You mentioned ykur doctor said you have 10 yrs not sure how he came up with that number?
Thinking back i had some symptoms dating all the way back to HS football, after HS i dindnt have alot of symptoms only if i had not worked out in a while and then try to get after it.
It wasnt till my mid 40’s that my symtoms got to where they were affecting my workouts, not every workout but as time went on by the time i hit 48-49 i gave up on running and just focused more on biking!
The runs was just getting to difficult to do anymore.
I noticed my bike rides were getting harder as well
So listen to your body if you get to where you have several good workouts with no issues, and a bad work out from time to time your probably ok, its when the bad days show up more than your good days!
Of course that was one sign!
Here are a list of other signs i was having
Hills, ladders squats i would get light headed
Hills or inclines i do live in high elevation so walking out a restaurant usually meant inclines after eating a meal or after drinking alcohol.
Working in hot weather
Getting up from sitting and feeling lightheaded
Again in 2022 my resting gradient was 22mmHg
They did not do a stress test!
Two years later after exercise induced heart failure resting gradient 48mmHg stress 122mmHg
Again hope this helps and listen to your body!
No one knows your body like you do!
Replies to "Just wanted to add this experience from myself. You mentioned ykur doctor said you have 10..."
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Honesty, I don't know how he came up with 10 years either. It's a blur but I think he said 10-15 years. I'm getting a second opinion for this all as well. My thinking is that if I need to get this in the next decade, why not do it when I'm at my youngest fittest time so that my healing is faster. I have no clue what state I'll be in 10 years and while I don't take this decision lightly at all, I am leaning toward earlier than later.
Generally, I feel mostly fine during my workouts. Only more recently, I've had some minor chest pain/palpitation and some minor lightheadedness with more rigorous exercise. It's one of those things that I wonder "am I just working out too hard" or "is this HOCM".
The stress test showed a resting LVOT gradient of 50mmhg at rest and then with exercise he said slightly above 70mmhg. The tech noted as 233mmhg with exercise, but cardiologist said with analysis it shows much lower.
I notice that when I walk up stairs (2 flights) I get winded where I never did before. I don't know if I'm overanalyzing myself though. My workouts are pretty good although I'm obsessively checking my heart rate to make sure I don't get too high.
It seems that at this time, my body may be symptomatic with higher pressures with exercise, but I'm not necessarily having extreme symptoms that would have caused me to question, if I weren't aware of my HOCM.
They've cut back my metoprolol for now to only 12.5mg a day, time released for now because I was having high fatigue with the medication.
The problem is that my resting heart rate was 40-50bpm with the 25mg and after seeing the stress induced pressures, it didn't give them much room to increase the medication before me going into bradycardia.
So I'm at the stage where I'm going to get a second opinion on all of this. I know Cleveland Clinic does a virtual second opinion. I'm looking into Mayo Clinic's second opinion options, which seem a little less straightforward.
I'm also doing my second opinion with Kaiser Permanente next month and speaking to the surgeons there and getting member services to give me the numbers of procedures they do a year. It's going to take a long time to build my "case" on why I should have this done at a COE. Or I'll need to cancel that plan, switch to another plan for my family, and start halfway with finding new doctors and getting the referrals. I am fortunate to have the time to sort this out, but it's a journey that is taking up a lot of my headspace right now.