I'm sure this will be long... I can't ever write anything short. You're all going to think I'm a hypochondriac by now with the medical issues going on in our family lately. How can one family possibly have so many medical issues at once?!!
On Sunday I started having chest pain. I had chest pain a few weeks ago that woke me up one night. I just ignored it though because it stopped. I had it for a little bit on Saturday night again, but it went away so I ignored it again. On Sunday it came back and was really uncomfortable and didn't stop for hours. It seemed to be getting worse, not better. Blake told me to check my pulse rate and when I did, it skipped a beat... many times! So I had Blake check me to see if I was making it up and his eyes got wide. He said we're going to the ER right now. I told him I was fine and it would go away, but really I was nervous so I gave in and let him take me. I hate hospitals and avoid them like the plague! I think I waited about 60 seconds in the waiting room before they got me back. The triage nurse called someone else in to help her and claimed "she didn't know how to hook up the EKG machine quickly." I saw right through it and knew she called the other guy in basically to move things along and "just in case". Once they got me hooked up he said, "PVCs". (Which I've now learned are not so bad, but at the time just having my condition have a name was scary! I didn't have a clue what it meant then.) After that they started hurrying. I could actually tell them when I felt one and sure enough it showed up on the scan at the exact same time and that's what I was feeling. They pushed me back to a room still laying on the bed (weird!) and hooked up an IV and took tons of blood for blood work. I told them I didn't really want to be a priority in the ER and that I could wait a little longer in the waiting room. They told me they don't mess around with chest pain. They reassured me that what I was experiencing, "is common." Then why all the hurrying if it's common? And would someone please tell me what's going on?! So I had to wait an hour for the blood work to come back. In that hour I was FREAKED OUT. I could see the heart rate moniter and it coincided every time to my chest pain. And it was getting more frequent. And my blood pressure and heart rate were WAY above normal. I wonder how much of that was from being scared. Blake wasn't there - he dropped me off at the hospital and took the kids home (as I requested) because I didn't want to bring them to the ER, and because I would stress too much if we left them home alone. So I sat there watching the monitor in a room all by myself, feeling awful. I was light-headed, dizzy, and sick to my stomach. My arms and legs were tingling. I was terrified! I honestly laid there wondering if I was dying. It was so incredibly SCARY! All I could do is pray that everything was normal and that I would get to go home and see my precious kids and husband again. It really put my life in perspective. I guess there's nothing like the shock of impending death to really open your eyes and put everything in perspective.
After reading up on PVCs since then I've learned they are common and often not too worrisome. They can be signs of other problems, but where they come out of the blue like that in a normally healthy person then it's not too bad. But at the time, I didn't know what was going on with me. And no one would really explain anything to me. So I was scared and worried! So after I asked about 100 people what was going on and if I was dying and was reassured that everything was ok, I finally started to calm down. My blood work came back after what seemed an eternity. The results: they think it's from low potassium. My potassium levels came back lower than normal, but not super low. My glucose was also a little high, but they didn't think that was the cause since I had just eaten. So they gave me 2 monstrous potassium pills that I was somehow expected to swallow without them choking me. The first one went down hard so I made the nurse stay in and make sure she was around to do the heimlich on me for the next one. I don't swallow pills well. They hooked me up to a Holter monitor. At that point I was hooked up to so many machines and had so many cords hanging off me that it was almost comical. Actually it really gave me claustrophobia. I just wanted out of that hospital and wanted to go home and sit on the couch and hug my babies.
So that was the excitement. I had to wear the monitor for 24 hours and then they'll (hopefully) be able to figure out what's going on with me. In the meantime I'm supposedly fine and I'm supposed to go on with life as usual, while having chest pain and worrying and feeling awful while my heart skips beats. I really want to just get back to my normal, routine, boring life rather than worrying about chest pain and heart issues!! But I just had to share about one of the scariest moments in my life. I really think it's going to be a turning point for me. No more being depressed that I have to make 10 meals a day and clean them up. No more stressing about crumbs on the floor. I'm just going to enjoy every single second I have with my family. I've really been so stressed out lately for nothing and I need to learn how to deal with it.
I'll update when I know anything else. This is really crazy - I consider myself a pretty healthy person!
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