This past weekend was pretty scary for me. I had been wearing an event halter monitor and on Friday, I got up, and my heart was beating rapidly, in fact, not really beating as much as fluttering, erratic and out of control. Now, mind you, I was on an event monitor. In other words, when I had my "event" I had to unplug myself, dial a number, give the operator my ID number and name, then hold the small unit over the receiver of my phone and press start..and I'm supposed to be doing this rather calmly? So, after about close to 2 minutes, it finishes, I pick up the phone, with quite a shaky hand, and the operator tells me to plug myself back in and hit start again. She wants a repeat of my "event". By now, the adrenalin has kicked in, so on top of the racing/erratic heart beat, I now have the super adrenalin rush. But, I dutifully hit start, record, unplug, place the unit by the phone and hit start. After this, she tells me to contact my doctor immediately and they would fax over the results. So, I try to maintain some composure (screaming inwardly) and ask, is this a heart attack? She says no, and I say, I have a scheduled appointment at 2:30 but not sure if I can last that long (it was around 10:30 at this time), so she tells me then to go to the ER. First of all, I am NOT a calm person by nature. I worry about everything and for everyone. If you have a problem, you can leave it with me and I'll worry for you. My friends call me the walking "worry doll".
I did go to the ER and was going to make an attempt to drive myself there, but it's about 25 minutes away and I didn't think I was in the right frame of mind to drive, so we called the ambulance. The medics arrived and hooked me right up and the one medic, who made me feel really good, said, "oh, it's just A-fib". JUST A-fib? I thought it was the kiss of death...I am doomed. I have to say, on the ride to the ER, the paramedics made me feel very comfortable. The woman, who was a former RN, said A-fib is quite common and is treatable. She also started an IV with Cardizem, which was started when we were about 5 minutes from the hospital. By the time we arrived at the hospital, I was still in A-fib but within 15 minutes was back to a normal sinus rhythm. All in all, the entire episode lasted about an hour or 90 minutes, and I'm sure most of that was escalated due to the panic attack I had along with the A-fib. They did keep me overnight in the hospital and released me the next day, loaded with my prescription and told to take 325 mil of Ecotrin daily.
I saw my cardio doctor today who said I'm on the low end of the A-fib scale and hopefully the meds will keep it under control. He told me the Ecotrin is all I need for a blood thinner right now, and hopefully it will stay that way, and he also said that now we know what we're dealing with, which is most of the battle. Some go on for years and years never knowing what is causing their skipped beats and palpitations..and it's not that I feel lucky, hell no, I just am not as anxious as I was before. I do believe I compounded my A-fib by having a panic attack and I will see my PCP next week, when he returns from vacation. Now I know my situation, I just have to learn how to deal with it and not let it control me.