It was all unexpected - and yet totally expected. I ended up in the ER on Wednesday night with a racing heartbeat and irregular heart palpitations.
Now, I have had heart palpitations (benign PVCS- premature ventricular contractions) before. Once in graduate school and occasionally over the past twenty years. However, I have had them since early January pretty consistently. Daily. My doc checked them out. I had a normal EKG with no irregularities. I am stressed out from homeschooling, from being a teacher, instructional assistant, custodian, lunch lady, mom, housekeeper, laundress. My doc told me to take some time for myself. But I do not know how. I can't step away from anything.
I feel locked in my house. My spouse feels it is still not safe to go hiking with other people (strangers who wear masks or friends we know who wear masks). His discomfort of the unknown of the virus has made it so hard for us to live (breathe), and do anything within reason. We can barely walk in our neighborhood without being questioned about who we saw and how many other people were wearing masks.
That is the root of all of the anxiety. I shield my kids from it. We talk about risk assessment and how safe they feel. We talk about science and facts. We talk about needing to be outside in fresh air and with small, socially distanced playdates with friends. Because their emotional health is important.
And so is mine.
But I am in the ER. At 10 pm, I finally called the on call nurse at my doctor's office and she was uncomfortable with my irregular heart palpitations and racing heartbeat. She told me to get to the ER.
I drove myself. Yeah, you could be angry. But I have two kids at home and they were sleeping, so we were not sure what to do. And my oldest has high anxiety - especially now - and she would be wrecked to know I was on my way to the hospital. Besides, you can't bring anyone with you to the ER due to covid.
I checked in at 11:45pm . By midnight, I had five viles of blood taken, an x-ray done, and an EKG taken.
This, friends, is what I got to look at while I was waiting for results:
How are cows relaxing? I think I thought about cows for two seconds before it started to annoy me. That is certainly not what I needed, was it?
Anyway, I waited for the doctor, who said that all my bloodwork came back normal - thyroid, cbcs, chem 7, all the stuff you remember hearing from hospital tv shows.......my potassium was slightly low, but not really enough to cause odd palpitations. He couldn't explain the racing heartbeat.
He wanted to run a D-timer, which would indicate if I had a blood clot somewhere. Or it could indicate nothing. If that blood test came back positive, then I would need a catscan. We talked about my history with cancer and I told him that I understood decision trees (there really are so very many decisions to be made). I said, ok to a cat scan being done if the test came back positive and by then, 1:30am, I was beyond exhausted.
Can scan was done at 2:15 am and by 2:22am I was emailing friends and family.
Still looking at cows.
At 3am, I was told my cat scan (which looked at my heart and lungs) was clear of any clots. I was going to be sent home with a suggestion to have a Holter monitor and an echocardiogram done by a cardiologist, but that it was not likely that I would die in the next few days. He suggested that an echocardiogram may find a structural issue, not much to be worried about, and that it is quite prevalent to find something like a mitral valve prolapse or something - which causes palpitations and are just "bothersome."
A lovely nurse came in with a potassium drink (it tasted like jolt cola) and explained that she has PVCs and deals with them all the time.
I drove myself home. I showered and slept. 4 hours, until I got up and did the remote schooling and laundress thing again. I sure wish I could get some help around here.......
I don't see an end to this really. I wish these palpitations would go away. I am still shaking my head about the relaxing cows.........
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