Don’t be the Frog in a Tepid Pot of Water

There’s a parable about two frogs. One frog is dropped into a pot of boiling water and recognizes that something bad is happening and jumps right out. Another frog is dropped in a tepid pot of water. The heat is turned on, but the frog does not realize until too late and he’s cooked. When it comes to your health, don’t be the frog in the tepid pot of water. I was that frog in the tepid pot and almost paid the ultimate price.

Disclaimer: I am not a healthcare professional. I am relating my experience, but everyone is different. So please take this article with that in mind. Talk to your doctor or health professional.

Ok, What the Heck Happened?

I found myself on 3/13/26 at the admittance desk of the local hospital emergency room with a note from my doctor: “Stage 2/3 Heart Block, expedite admittance”. Well – that got the desk attendant’s attention and I was admitted and in an ER room in 10 minutes – with clear instructions to stay seated at all times. After being hooked up to an EKG, I could see the concern on the nurse’s face as she asked me if I was dizzy, felt faint, or felt sleepy, or had chest pains. My answer was, no I feel fine, normal, and ok. Connected to the full set of sensors, my pulse was 39 BPM. Not good, especially since I was highly stressed out by all of this.

Heart block is not a clogged artery. It is a blockage of electrical signals required by the four chambers of your heart to pump blood. The atrium pumps and then the ventricle pumps sending blood to the lungs – and then the other side does the same returning blood from the lungs to your body. With heart block stage 2 (Mobitz Type II) the electrical impulse from the atrium to the ventricle does not make it or gets there too late. That means blood is not flowing right – this could be fatal.

The EKG trace clearly showed I had stage 2 heart block. There was no “tump-thump, just a “thump…woosh” kinda thing. I was sitting there in disbelief: I am healthy, I exercise a lot and do it consistently. How could this happen? Well, I think I was the frog in the tepid pot of water.

Aging is More Than Grey Hair

For those of us getting into the second half of our years, the most obvious sign of aging is grey hair, or just less hair where you want it. We tend to ignore other changes. Sure we can’t run as fast or as far, but we ignore the other invisible changes happening in our bodies. Our recovery times slow, soreness lasts longer, maybe we have a swollen ankle for a day that goes away. Your hands, which were always dry, start sweating. Maybe we run or bike slower one day and just say “I’m having a bad day”. You notice in a Zoom call that your face and your hand have different colors. “It must be the lighting.”, right? Wrong. Genetics are working – things are turning on and turning off.

Exercise is Important, but You Need to Look at the Data

I’m not running marathon’s or riding 100 mile bike weekends, but I’ve had a life filled with exercise: soccer, bike riding, karate, rowing and backyard fun. At least 3-4 days a week since I was 8 years old. This year I have already put 375km on my Ergatta rowing machine, but I was in the tepid water. I thought – there can’t be anything wrong if I can do this, right? Wrong!

I knew there were some strange things happening to me, but I wasn’t putting it all together. A fellow member of the Ergatta Facebook Community commented on one of my results, “Wow, that’s an amazing time and your heart rate is crazy low. How are you doing that?” My average heart rate over 10km while averaging 2:02/500m splits was 113 bpm. I’m not an Olympic athlete, but that data would say I should be trying out.This was my first wake up call that the water was heating up, but I ignored it for a few weeks. Its good to exercise, but taking a proactive look at your data is important not only to improve, but also to detect changes in your health that might go unnoticed.

Measuring the Temperature of the Water

My exercise bike was making my shoulders hurt. 2.5 years ago I decided to invest in an Ergatta rowing machine. Rowing was totally new to me. I had no idea what to expect so I connected it to Strava and then connected Strava to Intervals.icu so that I could track how I improved – in a sense it gave me a platform to measure myself. I got a heart rate monitor and combined that too. This setup gave me a “thermometer” to measure the temperature of the water.

Around the same time I was diagnosed with hypertension. I started tracking my BP with an OMRON bp cuff that I had lying around the house from when I was doing software engineering related to diabetes management. I got a Google Pixel watch and started combining data in Fitbit too.

Using Data

Intervals.icu was the key for me. With this tool you can compare your performance over time across all elements of your rowing or whatever your exercise program is (running, biking, etc.). Combined with a Polar OH1+ heart rate monitor, I could look at times, power, heart rate, energy, etc. I could see that, yes I was improving. My rowing for example moved from 2:30/500m splits to 2:01/500m splits. However I could also see dramatic changes in my heart rate – 40-50 bpm less. I thought this was a sign of getting stronger, but looking back it was not. Here’s a good example. I am cranking some serious power – 5 personal bests, and yet my average HR is only116. Impossible, but I took pride in it instead of taking it as a warning.

Meanwhile my OMRON cuff would throw an occasional atrial fibrillation warning, but it was 10 years old so it must be unreliable. My Pixel watch ECG function would either not complete, “heart rate too low”, or show inconclusive. The Pixel was old and the sensors were always “flaky” I said to myself. The water is getting hot and I’m oblivious; making excuses. Enjoying the bubbles in the hot tub.

Get out of the Water!

I discussed all of this with my doctor, but I was strong, healthy, and vibrant. When in the Dr.’s office nothing seemed wrong. My hypertension was the big topic and that was doing just fine. In December I got the new Pixel Watch 4. I got it out of the box and the first thing I tried was the ECG. It didn’t work – heart rate too low just like the old one. Now that caught my attention. I bought a Kardia Mobile 6L EKG device (ECG and EKG are used interchangeably). This is a 6 lead FDA approved medical device. I used it and the result was “possible atrial fibrillation” or “unclassified”. Well ok if there was something really wrong it would say so, right? More excuses…weeks will pass…

Using the Kardia Mobile 6L

What the Kardia device was showing me was that my heart rate was too low to get a good reading. Way too low. How could that be? 39-45 resting heart rate is really low. I did some research on line about things like bradycardia, but nothing seemed to match what I was experiencing. My symptoms did not match: I wasn’t fainting or having dizzy spells. Generally I felt fine. I was rowing better than ever and putting up big numbers. I started comparing my trace to “normal” traces on the internet. It was obvious that my trace was not normal. Finally after taking trips to Europe and Asia for work, because you know work is “important”, I decided to send a Kardia trace to my doctor.

That got his attention and I was in the Dr.’s office to confirm the data on his EKG machine, which he did. To his credit he was going to put me on a Holter monitor – after I returned from California (yeah another “important” work trip) – a 2 week delay on using the Holter. At the last second he said wait – “I want to send this for another opinion. I suspect something, but I’m not sure”. He told me I could not leave and it would take 15 minutes. I agreed to wait.

He came back and said there was a serious problem. I would have to go to the ER immediately. I had stage 2 or 3 heart block and had to go now. My life was on the line. Sadly, my first thought was “How would I get my car home? Its a manual. I can’t leave it there and I can’t drive myself to the ER.” I negotiated driving the car home, after all I felt “fine”, and it was only 0.25 miles to get home. My wife met be there and I jumped out of the pot and into the ER.

Out of the water…

I could hear the nurses talking about “crisis” and “impossible” and saw their faces. They were scared. They moved a crash cart into my room. I kept a brave face, made as many jokes as i could, but no doubt the seriousness of the situation came thru loud and clear.

They looked at everything to try to understand how this could happen and how I could have no symptoms. Was it Lyme Disease? Hemochromatosis? and on and on. The test results said no. Genetic? Maybe – probably. Most likely it developed over time as I was aging some gene turned off possibly. I had ultrasounds, echocardiograms, a cardiac MRI (trust me, you do not want to do one of these), and 16-20 tubes of blood drawn. For all intents my heart muscle looked great, strong, and without scarring, but electrically it was not working.

The treatment for this is a pacemaker. I had a Medtronic Azure™ S DR MRI dual chamber pacemaker (model: W1DR01) inserted three days ago on 3/16/2026, my dad’s birthday. The procedure was quick – about 1.45 hours. The device was inserted below my left clavicle, and fairly close to the sternum. The leads were attached to my heart using the left bundle branch pacing technique. The way this device will work is that it will sense the atrium firing and then send an electrical signal to the ventricle to pump. This restores the natural physiology of the heart. Following recovery, the device will respond naturally to exercise. Very cool!

Here you can see the difference in lead #1 on my EKG. The first image is before surgery and the second is after the pacemaker is working.

Post-surgery, day 2 was the most difficult. Tired and generally sore across my upper chest. If you are going to have this procedure done, be ready for that. I was told there would not be significant pain or soreness. Nonsense I say, I was sore, my chest was sore, and generally speaking, day 2 sucked. Day 3 was much better. I was able to do some very careful moderate walking. Complete recovery time is 4-6 weeks. After that I should be able to go back to my regular life.

Symptoms I Missed/Made Excuses About/etc.

• The occasional swollen ankle, left in particular
• Skin color differences between arms, legs, and face
• RHR below 50 – this is just bad
• Changes in sweating – for me hands and feet
• Flaky dry skin when you never had this before
• Frequent foot cramps especially at night
• “Napping” on the couch at 7PM
• Numbness in arms when driving for extended periods
• Devices “not working” for various reasons/excuses
• My workouts are awesome, there can’t be anything wrong with me!

Why am I posting this?

There are virtually no personal accounts on the internet of someone going thru this that I could find – especially with men. No one I know has gone thru this. It is scary lying in a hospital and trying to go to sleep knowing you might not wake up; sometimes my pulse would only be 19bpm with a nurse running in to see if I was still alive. No one I know has a pacemaker. I’m only 57. Hopefully someone in my position will Google this, find it, and take some small hope that everything will be ok.

It is difficult to know what to expect, what to do, how best to recover, or even if this is a permanent fix. I hope this post will help someone going thru something similar. I also hope to inspire anyone reading this to take your health seriously and use data as a core part of it and not just “how you feel”. You can feel “fine” and still be that frog in the tepid water like me.

It definitely helped to have my computer with me at the hospital. That gave me a couple of days to Goole the crap out of this topic. I had a set of questions ready for the doctors everyday. This is important because:

• It helped me feel like I had some power or control over what was happening
• The doctors knew they had an engaged patient
• I could explain about things that mattered to me: the best technology, the kind of exercise I like to do, family stuff
• I could better understand how the pacemaker would work and start to think about recovery right away
• It gave me a better ability to explain to my wife what was going on and that I would be ok most likely

You’ll remember that I said they placed the device close to my sternum? That is because I row and the surgeon knew that is a better place for a person that makes extensive use of their chest muscles and shoulders.

That $129 investment in a Kardia device saved my life and I am pretty sure that innocuous comment from a rower online did too because it led directly to me getting that Kardia device. I am going to go take a walk around my neighborhood as the first step in my recovery and getting back on that rowing machine right after that 4-6 week time period is in the past.

A final thought – no doubt that my wife and son helped me get through this. My brothers and sisters gave me support. My friends and colleagues at work called and texted me and I shared openly with them what I was going through. All of this helped me stay calm and focused on getting back on the right path. The nursing staff was incredible too. Kind, always there, always stabbing me with needles – lol, and always taking the time to make sure I knew what was going on.