And So...

I’m officially old.

I am now a cardiac patient. Can you believe it? At 41. I knew I was getting old, but really! Heart trouble! Never in a million years did I think that something would go wrong with my heart. I never get sick.

Except that I was sick when this happened. In fact, it is unrelated, but when this happened I’d been ‘fighting’ a very bad and persistent cold with a severe sore throat that I just couldn’t shake and which I still have a touch of today.

And so the details in brief…

Monday afternoon Mark came home from work and took me to the ER because earlier in the day my heart suddenly decided to go crazy – meaning that it began beating incredibly fast. Think the biggest scare of your life on steroids and you will know what it felt like. Very, very fast. My guess is that my heart was beating at 200 bpm or more. I’m not exaggerating. (Normal heart rate is 60-100 bpm.) And it beat like that for at least 5 to 10 minutes, maybe longer. It felt like forever. Anyway, that was at 9:00 am – at noon it was still beating very fast (although I’d begun to think I was crazy) but slower than at first so Mark came home from work and decided I need to go to the hospital ASAP.

Once we got to the ER (around 2:00 pm) my heart was clocked at 180 bpm and then settled in at about 150 bpm until I was given a shot of something (I still need to find out what it was) and it slowly returned to normal. I was admitted and spent the night at the hospital. While there I underwent every test you can imagine – apparently the doctors like to work in the middle of the night so I was getting CAT scans at midnight and blood drawn at 3:00 am. It was interesting, but very tiring. After it all I felt worse than I’d felt the entire time before. Probably due to the Nitro patch and the horrid pink drink I had to ingest.

I left late the following day with a diagnosis of SVT or Supraventricular Tachycardia which, in short, means that my heart will sometimes go crazy and decide to beat super fast for no reason. A doctor once told me that I had a very fast metabolism. HA! No joke. The good news is that SVT isn’t fatal…just unpleasant. The bad news is that episodes can not be predicted and I might pass out (I have a history of passing out for no reason – although now I finally know why).

After I got home my mother told me that she thinks (from some genealogy research she has done) that I might have Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome because apparently my great, great-grandfather had this and it runs in the family. More good news is that he lived to be in his eighties and as far as I know he didn’t die of SVT.

And so…that’s the latest in the string of weird things to happen. Mark and I have coined a term for these weird happenings…we say, “One more thing.”

And so…one more thing. Praise the Lord.

Thankful…

26. That SVT isn’t fatal.
27. That I didn’t pass out at the top of the stairs with Ben in my arms.
28. Being aware of my condition.
29. Wonderful doctors and nurses.
30. Grandma being available to watch the children and Larry (one of Mark’s brothers) being at her house and able to bring her to our house. (Amazing how God orchestrates everything.)
31. The children taking care of one another.
32. Good friends that care.
33. Sweet surprises.
34. Get well cards that say, “Thank you, Mom.”
35. Getting back to normal.
36. Mark 1:30-31