…amidst the deserted downtown streets, alone with my husband…

A romantic tête-à-tête? Returning from a date?

No — a trip to the ER. What fun!

Sometime in the last few years I’ve started having what they call SVTs — supraventricular tachycardia. My heart will suddenly start beating around 200 times a minute. When trying to describe it to my sister she asked if it wasn’t just a panic attack. No, it’s different — it presents distinctly on the EKG.

They say it is an electrical problem of the heart with signals going awry. In many cases, mine thankfully one of them, it’s not associated with any worse heart conditions (though they do check enzymes to make sure I haven’t had a heart attack when it happens). It’s happened enough to require an ER trip I think maybe 6 or so times in the last 8 years. The last time it happened was a year ago last April.

I’ve had to go off all caffeine and can’t take decongestants. I take a beta-blocker which is supposed to help, and does, I think. There are measures I can take at home if it starts up, like inhaling and then acting as if I am going to blow air back out, but not letting any escape. That has warded it off a few times.

But last night after I put Jesse to bed around 10:30 and came back downstairs to get something to drink, it started up as I was getting ice out of the tray. I tried the blowing thing, I laid down with my feet above my heart (another recommendation), I went into the bathroom (bearing down as if having a BM can help). After about an hour of taking turns trying these measures, I gave up and we went in to the ER. It was 11:30 by this time, and my husband usually has to get up at 5 a.m. to get to where he needs to be at work. I hated that he was going to have to be up the next few hours. The first few times this happened I felt more panicky. Now it is mainly an annoyance.

One thing about it, though — when you get to the ER with a heart rate of 187, they take you right back with no waiting. I asked if I could use the restroom before they hooked me up to everything (I always have to go at the most inconvenient times!), but they said they’d rather I didn’t — they’d rather take care of the heart thing first. So even though I’d been walking around my own home using the bathroom at my own discretion and under my own power for the last hour, I acquiesced (sigh!) I know they have to be concerned about a patient passing out with a lack of oxygen to the brain when this kind of thing is going on.

One of the nurses was a guy who looked to be about 16 who held up the little hospital gown for me to get into. Nuh-uh, fella, I’m not changing right in front of you! I didn’t say that, but I stepped over to the corner where a chair was and I guess he got the message, because he laid it down and left the room. The my husband helped me change.

So they got me all hooked up to the EKG, an iv, and oxygen and asked a ton of questions and then injected the iv with adenosine, and I felt really, really, really miserable for about 10 seconds or so. The adenosine causes the heart to “pause,” as the doctor put it, long enough to get the signals straight and “reset” the electrical rhythm back right. Then they had to monitor me for a while and make sure everything was stable. Then they sent me home.

It’s almost become routine now.

There is a type of surgery they can do where they go up through a blood vessel in your groin through to your heart (like they do with a heart catheterization) and somehow “zap” the little area that’s causing problems. The first time this happened, I was sent for follow-up to a heart doctor who specializes in electrical problems of the heart, had an echo done, etc., and he told about that surgery. But he said if this wasn’t happening very often, I could just wait. So that’s we’ve opted to do. Really the zapping part of the heart thing doesn’t bother me as much as having to lie flat on my back for hours afterward, which would be extremely uncomfortable for me, and not being able to get to a restroom. I have this almost phobia about being able to get to a restroom, and my body just doesn’t cooperate with bedpans. But since I have these SVTs less than once a year and don’t have any corresponding problems, they say it fine to wait.

I do have a follow-up visit with my doctor this week.

One thing about going in the direction of the hospital, though, is that a Krispy Kreme is on the route. Only once that I can remember have I ever gone out of my way specifically to get a donut there. And since we go up to the hospital or the doctors in the area fairly infrequently, it’s kind of a treat to get a donut there on the way back. Well, we discovered on our way back that they were open 24 hours. And this one has a drive-through! My husband said it seemed kind of ironic to be getting donuts after coming from the cardiac unit of the ER, with my hospital bracelet still on. But I guess you could say we made a date of it after all. 🙂

I got to sleep about 2:30, got up at 5 as usual, but went back to bed after Jesse got off to school until lunchtime.

I was wrestling with the whys of it. It just seems so inconvenient and such a waste of time when this happens. It’s not like there was an immediate spiritual benefit like witnessing to someone at the hospital. But then I reminded myself that inconvenient is better than traumatic, and a problem that can be taken care of in a few hours is better than a week of the flu or a longer term worse illness. I really don’t have anything to complain about.

I was glad that it happened when my husband was here. It has happened a couple of times before when he was away, which had been one of my fears. The Lord worked everything out each time with a friend taking me in and the kids being old enough by them to be home alone. But my husband is an excellent caretaker. 🙂

So, life is back to “normal” (whatever that is), hopefully for a very long time to come.