As I have written here before ~ when you have a blog for eight freaking years, there isn't a lot that gets missed ~ I have physical quirks. Low blood pressure. Bad ears. Vaso vegal response. And a weird heart thingy. See how medically sophisticated that one is? Yeah, there's a reason for that one. That's all I know it as: Pobble's Weird Heart Thingy.
When I was 19, I was in rehearsals for Music Man when suddenly, I thought I was having a heart attack. Being a the-show-must-go-on-stupid-19-year-old type o'gal, I sat down and didn't tell a damn soul until my heart calmed back down again. After all, I might've lost the role, and dammit, I wanted to play Zanita! *insert eye roll here* That was the first episode. For the past 24 years, I have had them off and on, to greater and lesser degrees. My heart begins to race, to pound very hard. My hands get tingly. Sometimes I can breathe it down. Sometimes I pass out. There's no way of knowing which type of episode it's going to be when it starts. The "fun" is riding it out.
The problem is that they are short. A really long episode only lasts about 30-40 minutes. A short one can be a couple minutes. Which means by the time I am in an ER and hooked up to a machine, I'm fine. Perfectly fine. Embarrassingly fine. The other problem is that I might have two episodes in a week ~ or I might not have one for three or four months. Another way to make it difficult to capture and diagnose. YAY!
It's been diagnosed as a panic attack (which it's not), magnesium deficiency (which it's not) and "Pobble just being weird" (which I am, but it's not, and really had no business being in a medical chart anyway). I've carried around a holter monitor. I've been poked, prodded, pictured, and painted. Nothing.
SO! Wednesday, I am getting a doo-hicky (wow, all these really technical terms; are you keeping up?) implanted in my chest. It's an implantable loop recorder, looks a lot like a thumb drive, and it goes just under my skin, in the right of my breast. It's like having an EKG machine under my skin. It will record all "events of note" and we will finally get this shit figured out.
I'm excited. Yes, nervous, but mostly excited. Plus? I get to be bionic. As Nemeria and I were discussing, I get to have an EKG. Under. My skin. How cool is this????? And Lithus thinks scars are sexy, so I'm all good.
And yes, I'll keep you posted. :)
Those are Pobble Thoughts. That and a buck fifty will get you coffee.
3 comments:
And now I'm starting to think about all the cool tattoos you could get that would incorporate the scar...
Good Luck!
So glad you're getting the implant and I won't exhort you to run a photo of the scar but I'm sure it'll be adorable. Seriously, though, I am glad you're doing that. How disconcerting what you have dealt with. Oh, and isn't a holter monitor fun. I've been there and one that after my minor stroke in 2008. But, we do what we have to. Good luck, dear friend.
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