I woke up yesterday on a idle Thursday morning with my heart racing. I sat up and knew right away what wrong. Nine years ago I woke up with the same thing, A-fib. For those who don't know what that is, it an heart arrhythmia where the upper chamber of the heart quivers and is not in sync with the lower part. Basically its a rapid disorganized heartbeat. (Now I know I am not the most organized person but this is going beyond my control.)
Last time I had this I was given a medication that slowed down my heart rate and I eventually converted to a Normal heart rhythm on my own. That time they felt it was caffeine and stress induced. This time I know I did not have that much caffeine. The stress on the other hand...who isn't nowadays?
So I went to the hospital and sure enough I was in rapid A-fib at 180 beats a min. No wonder I felt like I was running a marathon. They gave me Cardizem which slowed the rate down and made it much easier to breath. Then all my lab work was great and my Echo was pristine. The Cardiologist wanted to try a medication, Rythmol, before attempting cardioversion....me too. So 2 hours after the Rythmol still no P waves, never thought I would be missing my P waves so much.
Next stop...Cardioversion. For those who don't know what that is...they zap you with defibrillator. Doesn't that sounds like fun? So I bought myself a ticket to the Cardiac Center for the procedure, they did put me out and I didn't feel a thing. All I remember was saying to the 2 women giving me the medication to sedate me that they were "very pretty" and next thing I remember was talking to my husband. I then said to him, "how long does it take for this medicine to kick in?" Everyone laughed because I was done at this point and more importantly I was in Sinus Rhythm (normal heartbeat)!
Needless to say, I am now perfectly fine. They don't know what brought this episode on, most likely stress. I am not on any medications, which is a good thing. I am really great at telling patients what to do but I really stink at being the patient.
So what do you do when you are ordered to take the day off? You have time to write at blog post about the ordeal and you make yourself a blog button.
What do you think?
Good news. I got my camera back, yippee!