[Shrek] So, where have we been? (part 1)

So, now that the holiday season is over and the Blizzard of 2010 (which technically wasn't a blizzard so we'll have to see what name they end up call it) is over I have a few minutes to explain why the blog has been dead and what is hopefully up in the future.

OK, the past few months...and it's kind of a long story so I'm breaking it up into smaller parts.

Over the summer I developed a heart condition called atrial fibrillation, or "A-fib" for short. In itself it's not a particularly dangerous condition other than it increased the risk of blood clots forming because my heart doesn't beat as efficiently as normal, so blood thinners were prescribed and I'm good to go. Of course, getting to that point is a journey of its own.

Not so surprisingly Fiona knows all the exact dates, but I've never been good at them so I'm going to just give a general feel of when what happened. It started in the middle of July (I do remember it was a Thursday) when I woke up in the middle of the night needing to use the bathroom and I could tell my heart wasn't beating "normally". I use the quotation marks because my normal heartbeat is abnormal to begin with as I have premature atrial contractions (PACs) that are controlled about 99% of the time by medication. So I didn't give it much thought and went back to bed.

The next morning I get up and it's still going on, but I'm still not concerned about it because it feels pretty close to what my normal arrhythmia feels like when it's happening, so I take my morning pills and go off to work...where it starts getting worse. After having a cup of coffee about 9am and it's still happening I begin to start worrying about it, beginning a text book stress cycle: my hearts beating irregularly so I begin to stress about it, which causes my heart to race in an irregular rhythm, which raises my stress level...and, well, you get the picture.

So to make a very long story a little shorter Fiona and I head off to the emergency room after consulting with my doctor's office. Now I'm not as huge fan of crowds so heading to an ER in the middle of the morning isn't exactly high on my list of things I want to be doing, but luckily when I got there the waiting room was empty. Of course when I mentioned to the triage nurse at the window that my heart was beating irregularly I doubt a large crowd would have been an issue for me as she immediately opened the door and had me sit down taking my blood pressure. I don't recall what it was, but as soon as she was done she told me they were going to hook me up to an EKG just to see what was going on.

What happened next was one of those moments that looking back you see stuff that was happening that you didn't notice was going on until you think about it. There were four wheelchairs in the triage room and the one the nurse put me in was the only one that had an IV poll attached to it. It meant nothing to me at the time, but looking back that is obviously the signal to the ER folks that I'm a cardiac patient. As they put me in a room and hooked me up to an EKG there were a handful of folks standing around at the desk. I hardly noticed them, of course, but looking back I now realize they were standing there in case I was having a heart attack.

I wasn't. What I was in was A-fib, and the nurse saw that right away. Suddenly the tension level dropped as she said to me it wasn't serious, gave me a 20 second run down of what was happening, and that we'd be able to fill out some forms while the cardiac staff drew some blood.

It was at this point Fiona asked if she should call my mother, who works at the hospital in the surgical wing. I gave her the "Are you f---ing nuts?" look as we both laughed knowing she would only worry, race down to the ER, and make stuff worse.

After the blood draw results came back a heart attack was totally ruled out (I had thought they'd already done that, but hey, it's nice to be sure) they decide to give me an echo-cardiogram, and Fiona and I have to wait about an hour for the tech to show up to give me one. During this time the nurse and doctor check in several times to check on me and report nothing has changed and that this isn't a serious condition that can be treated with medication the vast majority of times. Another thing that was helpful was I knew one of the guys I bowl with has A-fib and once they got his medication levels right he's virtually unaffected by it.

Once the echo-cardiogram was done the ER doctor came in and told Fiona and I that I needed to see a cardiologist, and that there were two available in the ER to see.

{SIGH}, now I have to talk to my Mom because I don't want to pick a guy with a bad reputation. My Mom, of course, took the news like any Irish Catholic Mom would--that the end of the world was upon us--and raced down to the ER. She wasn't there 2 minutes when all my numbers on the monitors I was attached to started going up. The ER doctor came in, looked at me, then the monitor, and then at my mother. And then he threw me under the bus with an ear to ear grin, telling me he'd come back later as he walked away stifling a laugh. As my luck would have it my Mom didn't know anything about either cardiologist, so I took the one that was going to be available first, Dr Maki.

Because the wait for test results and stuff was pretty long I was still in the ER when my Mom went off work, so she came back down to sit with Fiona and me. I had been moved into an observation room in the meantime because as the doctor laughingly said, the ER is for people who need urgent care, not for folks that need a nap. When my Mom came back she said all of the nurses said Dr Maki was the right choice, and that I'd really like him. After a short while he came in with test results and started talking about what was going on and how we planned to treat it. He also wanted me to spend the night in the hospital under observation, but the look on my face gave him the answer that wasn't going to happen.

After telling me to take it easy that night--like there was a chance I was planning on running a marathon--he told us to make an appointment at his office for the next day and to come right back to the ER if I experienced any pain, dizziness, etc. The ER doctor discharged me soon after, and home we went.

Next time, my visit to Dr Maki's office and the repercussions of being a chicken.