HEART ARRHYTHMIA PROBLEM

HEART ARRHYTHMIA PROBLEM.

It’s all in your head this heart arrhythmia problem.

Maybe you have heard this before. This heart arrhythmia problem thing is just in your head, get over it. Well, the thing is you cannot just get over it because it’s not in your head it is in your heart, because that is where a heart arrhythmia problem is.I read an interesting blog from Danielle Urquhart who has Inappropriate Sinus Tachycardia (IST) and her “8 Important things every IST sufferer wants you to know.” And it got me thinking about how other people saw my Afib, and seemingly normal life (OK I feel that I do have a normal life, even better than normal – I’m blessed).

For me, one of the big problems is that nobody can see your “problem” and this caused me to think that I am overreacting. I have had different types of Afib attacks during the years. This included episodes where it felt as if I am going to die, because my heart was beating so fast, it felt that it would run off for good, never to return to a normal sinus rhythm.

There have been other episodes (more recently) that this heart arrhythmia problem was hardly noticeable. All of us Afibbers know that we “feel” our hearts and take note of every beat. So if some beats are too fast or to “hard” you may start to worry about an arrhythmia taking over your chest. But sometimes the problem is that you are not certain.

The thing with my last few heart arrhythmia “attacks” was that is was not attacks. It was just an uneasy beat, a bloated or full stomach, just a few skipped beats that I thought would go away. That is what I thought, until I went to my doctor who confirmed it as the comeback kid Mr. Afib aka AF, atrial fibrillation and in the broader sense an heart arrhythmia problem.

I can remember the Monday morning like it was yesterday, I can remember where I sat – and then – something just felt strange. Was it my heart or my stomach? It has happened in the past,  when my stomach was full,  I could “feel” my heart. Is it what I felt now? I started questioning myself and reassuring myself that it was nothing. I moved around in my seat and gave a few anxious cough’s, but the feeling did not go away.

But I must confess that I am lucky to at least know what I am confronting. In fact, with my last afib attack, I was in the middle of an exam week and could not go in for the Cardio version straight away.  Please! don’t think I’m reckless, because I did go to my cardiologist immediately and he gave me a few options. The problem was that I was in the middle of this exam week and had studied a lot with a small study group. If I missed, the exam week, I could only write it the next year. Some of the subjects were made easy because the study group helped me a lot with understanding and interpreting the case studies and accounting modules.

So the doctor  gave me an anticoagulant and he scheduled my cardioversion for the next Monday, although he did warn me that the longer I stayed out of sinus rhythm the higher the fail rate could be to get me back in rhythm.

So the bottom line for me is: “if in doubt find out!”

This can be done by feeling your pulse, seeing a doctor or a health practitioner, using a portable ECG device or going to the ER.

Keep your NSR.