9/03/2010

The night before...

For as long as I can remember I have had reoccurring 'rapid heartbeat' issues. I have ended up in the ER many times and seen a couple different cardiologists, each time hearing "nothing major"; Mitral Valve Proplapse; stress... but bottom line not much that can be done; just have to live with it. However, in June I had one that lasted for more than 7 hours so ended up in the emergency room of a hospital that specializes in heart issues. My little (yes, little and I know most of you will agree) heart was beating at 230 beats per minute! It was identified as SVT (Supraventricular Tachycardia) Unfortunately there was nothing they could do except STOP my heart by giving me adenosine in order to to break the rhythm. It was really scary but worked! After monitoring me for a while, I was released to come home but was instructed to make an appointment with my cardiologist within a few days.

My Dr. reviewed everything from the ER and immediately saw I was a candidate for a procedure performed at Johns Hopkins. He referred me to this man...Dr. David Spraggwho 'fixed' my heart yesterday!

We had to be there by 6:00 a.m. so Ronnie and I decided to spend the night at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. We stayed here...in this room...we strolled along the Inner HarborAnd ate here...

The actual procedure is called an Electrophysiology Study/Ablation but in my words, they went into my heart through the groin, administered medicine to send my heart into a rapid rate, found the problem, burned the unnecessary 'wire', administered medicine to see if it would go back into a rapid rate, didn't work. Tried again with more medicine; didn't work. So he thinks I'm fixed! There's a 95% chance it won't happen again. Needless to say, I'm very happy.

For those of you that called me, kept me in your prayers or sent me notes, THANK YOU! I appreciate your thoughtfulness and most of all for just caring. I don't take any of you for granted, in fact those that I didn't expect to hear from called and some that I did, didn't. But, I love you all just the same.

I don't usually blog about me and medical stuff but supposedly this is pretty common among women so if you experience this and have never been diagnosed, push the issue....it can be fixed.

1 comment:

  1. Awww, thanks for sharing ! I'm so glad to hear your fixed !! Anything involving the heart can be especially scary !!!
    It's awesome that with technology so much can be done to correct problems !
    God is good (GREAT) !!!

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