My Wake-Up Call

It started innocently enough, on Super Bowl Sunday.   I was enjoying a relaxing day at home, making Valentine's Day cards, when the headache started.

When I woke up with it Monday morning, and it hung around all day, I started to worry. You see, I never get headaches.  But I went to work anyway, since I wasn't feeling anything else unusual.  I wasn't congested, and didn't have a sore throat or anything that would indicate I was getting sick. I wasn't stressed out for any reason. Yet the longer the headache stuck around, the worse I started to feel. Just this total uneasiness I couldn't explain, accompanied by a new awareness of the speed of my heartbeat...which didn't feel right either.

Fifteen minutes after I got in the car to drive home at the end of my work day, it hit me.   It felt like a weigh settled on top of my chest and just sat there, and my heart felt like it would beat right out of my body.   I almost pulled over and went straight to the ER.   In hindsight, I should have.   But instead I told myself to keep breathing and try to calm down -- I was working myself into a panic attack over nothing.   I sang along with the radio to calm myself down, convinced as long as I had breath to sing I would be OK.

I made it home, put a hockey game on the radio, and laid down in my bed with two pillows under my legs. I laid there for 30 minutes, feeling my heart race and wondering when it would stop. I debated on calling an ambulance, but somehow I fell asleep for a bit.  When I woke up, I felt a little better. Maybe it was all my own doing, getting myself worked up like that.  So I spent the rest of the evening resting, getting up for short stretches, then starting to feel a little weak and laying back down again.

When I got up this morning, I felt much better that the previous evening, but still not myself. More importantly, my heart still beat too noticeably, feeling too large for my chest. I kept reminding myself to breathe, but the realization was hitting me -- what I was feeling wasn't normal.

So I headed to the emergency room -- alone and scared of what a doctor would find wrong with me.

Being hooked up to monitors isn't fun...especially wearing a hideous hospital gown...

Three vital sign checks, 1 EKG, 4 vials of blood, a chest x-ray and 7 HOURS later, the doctor had a theory -- I suffered an incidence of Supraventricular Tachycardia (SVT).  In simple terms, it's a when the electrical signal that causes your heart to beat misfires, then gets stuck on a repeat cycle.  That explained the initial burst of pressure I felt, followed by the racing heart for 30 minutes.  A person can have an episode like this with no advance symptoms, and it can go away just as quickly.  Or last for a few days.

I say theory because the doctor told me that every test result was "stone cold normal"  (he was a young guy, which explains the undoctorly lingo).  Basically, because I waited to go in and wasn't in the middle of the episode, they couldn't find anything wrong with me.  The theory was largely based on my description of what I felt.  Knowing the tests showed nothing physically wrong did make me feel a little better, at least until the doctor said he could prescribe me a short course of anti-depressants.    When I declined, he sent in a social worker (a lovely woman named Margaret and about my age, coincidentally) to talk to me about any "anxiety" I might be feeling.  She also mused about whether my hormones could be acting up.   Then I started feeling like the crazy spinster cat lady.

I suppose the fact that I was crying during the majority of the discussion with the doctor didn't help.  But after waiting 5 hours to find out what was happening to me, I was beyond exhausted emotionally.  I left work at lunch time without eating lunch, so by the time I saw the doctor the banana I had for lunch was long digested, and my only food options in the ER were from a vending machine, so of course my blood sugar was at an all-time low as well.  Most importantly, I have always been terrified of doctors in general, and hospitals specifically.  I was raised in a family where you don't see a doctor unless you need a broken bone reset or you are dying.  All that combined made me come across as an irrational mess.

So I left with aftercare instructions for Heart Palpitations and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  More importantly, I left knowing I have to do more moving forward to take care of my health, because I don't ever want to feel this way again if I can help it.   I've been putting off a good top-to-bottom physical for far too long.

I'm done putting it off.