Lemon Hearts

I figured today would be a good day to write about hearts. I don’t have much time to write, but I never have time to write anymore.

The news I did not disclose in my last e-mail is that my heart might be a lemon, so I’ll trade with anyone who wants to spontaneously die. I love lemons any just about anything lemon-flavored, but I wouldn’t go so far as to want a lemon for a heart.

I nearly blacked out while washing dishes the night of New Years day after dinner. I wasn’t doing anything strenuous except maybe sneezing when out of the blue I feel my heart stop and everything got dim. Normally I occasionally feel my heart skip a beat and then race like its catching up after, and by ‘normally’ I mean these palpitations have been happening for the last 8 or 9 years. But that night it didn’t try to start again right away, so I knelt down and was about to lay down to get some blood back up to my brain when it started beating again before I had to go that far. That was pretty scary stuff. It’s not like I had any warning when it is going to happen or anything. At least with a heart attack you get some recognizable warning symptoms usually with time to call an ambulance or something.

I mentioned it to my mom a while back, and she happened to have just found out that she has this condition called Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that can be passed down genetically. So she has been encouraging me to go get it checked out, but it’s been low on my priority list until recently.

It was less scary before I nearly blacked out and before I read about the possibility of just keeling over dead suddenly after (or while) doing anything strenuous. I don’t know for sure if that’s what it is, but it sure sounds like my symptoms. So I just made an appointment to see my doctor on 1/4. He checked my blood pressure, pulse, and asked me a lot of questions. I didn’t suggest any self-diagnosis other than my mother experiencing something similar, and he suggested that it might be a cardiomyopathy. So he set me up to do a 24-hour holter monitor and get an echo-cardiograph the following week.

The 24-hour holter monitor was a miserable experience that I am glad that I won’t have to repeat because I happened to have a palpitation that day. I feared that it wouldn’t happen during that 24-hour period because I can go days without experiencing it sometimes, but I got lucky.

The echo-cardiograph was okay but it would have been more interesting if it the picture of my heart was clearer. The technician tried to help clarify the images, but I just wasn’t seeing much that was recognizable. Ultrasound pictures are just nothing you would want to frame and hang on the wall except as abstract art. I don’t know if they found anything in the echo-cardiograph, but my doctor referred me to a cardiologist. I didn’t see the one he referred me to because my mom wanted me to go see the same one she has been seeing since he knows her history too.

I went to see the cardiologist on January 30th. The waiting room at the cardiologist sucked, but the doctor was nice. He asked a bunch of questions and seemed really concerned about my symptoms at my age. He mentioned that I may qualify for some special test case, and he asked me to see a Cardiac Electrophysiologist, Dr. Ellison Berns, for his opinion. He also set me up with an event monitor that I have to wear for 30 days.

This monitor has only two leads and I don’t have to sleep with it on, so it’s a lot less miserable than the 24-hour holter monitor. The only problem is that the adhesive stays stuck to your skin no matter what you do. Nail polish remover helps get the pads off easier, but it doesn’t help much with the adhesive. I’ll have to see if actual adhesive remover will help, but you can only order it online.

Unlike the 24-hour monitor, this one only stores one recording at a time, so I have to call it in to clear it each time. While it’s nice and small, I would think they would have a better way of transmitting the data with today’s technology, but instead I have to stick it up to the receiver and play it back to send it. The only good thing about having to listen to it is that I can pick out my heartbeat in the annoying noise. I just have to find a conference room where I won’t disturb anyone anytime I have to transmit it from work because it sounds worse than a modem and it lasts two minutes. Some days I have to send it 3 or 4 times a day and other days none.

It’s certainly worrying my boss. He thought he only had to worry about me getting run over by a bus. He’s going to have me documenting everything I know for the rest of my life. Another member of my team went to the doctor for something similar, but it turned out to essentially be all in his head. My boss seemed to think that might be the case with me until I started telling him about all the testing they want to do. Finding out that I can actually feel the symptoms disturbed him even more.

So we’ll see what it turns out to be eventually. I won’t know until at least sometime next month.