I learned a new word this week...Arrythmia.

I acquired the knowledge of this new word at the ER at 4 AM Thursday morning. I wasn't going to write a post about a personal health challenge, but due the timing and circumstances lots of people now know about my "heart issue", so I may as well come clean, because frankly I am tired of discussing it. Not that I don't appreciate people's concerns, but I just always have loathed being a product of the rumor mill. I much prefer to deal with things privately, and stay off the charity/sympathy radar. The center of attention is my least favorite place to be.

Anyway, I digress. Here's what happen in case you were wondering. Thursday I started feeling this weird sensation in my chest. It was a little disturbing and uncomfortable, but I ignored it because I really didn't have the time to deal with it. As I was trying to fall asleep, it became really obvious and I even commented to Wes about it. I did fall sleep until about 3am when I woke up sweating and feeling light-headed. The "fluttering" in my chest had turned to "galloping" and I started to get a little worried. It would come and go but didn't stay away for long enough to be very comforting. I am sure that the anxiety of the unknown was totally exacerbating the situation, but I woke up Wes and he drove me to the ER to get checked out. They did an EKG and put me on a monitor for an hour to watch my heart rhythms. Basically the electric impulses that control the heart where misfiring. I would miss a beat then the next beat would be stronger as the heart attempted to push out the extra blood from missing the last beat. That is what causes the "galloping" sensation. My heart rate would rise from about 70 to 90 after that as it tried to reset to a normal rhythm. That is how I understood the explanation anyway. This happen about a dozen times over the hour that I spent there. The bad thing about going to the ER at that time in the morning is that the doctor is in hour 10 of his 12 hour night shift. The ER was empty, and it was pretty obvious that this doctor had been awoken from some serious REM sleep. He was struggling to get his contact back in as he spoke to me about my condition. His assessment was that I do not have any structural abnormalities and that it would probably go away on it's own and not to worry.

Apparently the non-cardiac causes of this, (which I hope applies to me) can be stress, medications, or caffeine. Well I know for sure it is not stress and I have sworn of my very minimal caffeine consumption including my old friends chocolate and Diet Coke. It hasn't helped so far as the "palpitations" continue, but hopefully my sleepy ER doc was right that I am not likely to drop dead of a massive heart attack from this anytime soon, at least not until the ER bill arrives anyway.

By the way, how do you like that foreshadowing in my previous post about "restarting my heart". So maybe I do have a little bit of stress.