V-tach
Yeah, I'm home. I'm overwhelmed and overemotional. I'm definitely going to need a while to chill out, but that certainly doesn't mean I don't want to hear from all of you-- unless of course you have bad things to say to me, in which case shut up and fuck you.
They've taken so many precautions that, baring incredibly bad luck, I won't have another episode of ventricular tachycardia.
For those of you who didn't hear, Saturday night while I was driving home from work, I was about a minute from my driveway when it was suddenly like someone pushed a button and my heart went into overdrive.
You all know I suffer from anxiety and I'm often debating whether or not I'm having heart attacks. I can't explain it, but I knew this was different. My body kind of told me. It was definitely a "holy shit" moment, and the blessed thing is that instead of plunging into panic, a pure human desire to live kicked in.
I drove the rest of the way, parked the car, and informed my parents. They told me I was having a panic attack and I should go try to get my mind off it. I didn't think so, but felt embarrassed enough from my last trip to the Sarasota ER to back down. This was maybe 6:30. But that will to live took over and I had them take me to the ER, where I arrived around 7:15. My mom stopped the car at the door and I got out.
Things started going black. I knew immediately that I needed to pass out in the waiting room rather than outside. It was probably the most difficult 10 or 20 steps of my life. Every step brought more darkness. I leaned all my weight on the doors, like they were 300 pounds each. They slowly swung open. I looked at the receptionist. I remember saying that I was about to pass out.
My next memory was being on a gurney. They were prepping me, asking me if I was alone. I remembered my mother and asked them to find her. I heard "v-tach, v-tach" and soon they were injecting things into my veins. I started to cry. I wondered if I was going to die. I knew what tachycardia was.
I was looking at doctors and nurses standing around me, watching was they directed each other. I was terrified. My mother was standing in the corner, watching my heartbeat on the monitors with wide, silent eyes. She made me nervous.
And suddenly I wasn't nervous. I was somewhere else. I was slipping away into a beautiful dream. My friends and my family were there with me. There was no pain or fear in me. I remembered, just for a few seconds, that I had arrived to this peace from a very bad place, but now there was nothing but flowers and trees and smiling faces and a deep-seated serenity. And then it all started to change again; instead of fading, suddenly I was back on the table with everyone gathered me around me.
"We lost her for a few seconds," I heard.
Did I die? I wanted that peace back, not this fear again.
But I hadn't "died"; while my heart was switching back from v-tach into sinus, the drop was so abrupt that for about six seconds, there was hardly any oxygen going to my brain.
"It's going to be okay," one of them told me. "We're getting your heart rate down. It's going to be okay."
I was skeptical, but I thought of that beautiful peace and felt a little better about dying. I could at least be assured that if I died that night in the ER, it would feel a lot like dreaming. For a few seconds my brain would broadcast happy thoughts, then quickly everything would fade to black and that would be end of my life. I a weird way, I kind of accepted it.
But obviously I didn't die. They ended the arrhythmia and immediately started their tests to determine what had gone wrong. It wasn't anxiety. They sent me in for a CT scan and I knew I just had to focus on being brave like I was five and going to my first day of school. After the scan, they eventually gave me a hospital room. The wonderful nurse I would later come to know as Margie made sure I was well-supplied with Xanax, being an anxiety suffer herself.
I don't remember the days anymore. They were supposed to transfer me to Holy Cross, but some internal politicking left me hanging until Wednesday when they sent me to apparently-renowned cardiologist Dr. Osman at Broward General. I knew I would need a pacemaker. I had cried about it a lot. It made me so angry; I was 23, and couldn't believe that so many things were happening to me all at once. I was on heart medication (amiodarone, FYI) to keep me from slipping back into v-tach and I was the only kid I knew who was going to also be on blood pressure medication for the next 60 years of my life. The thought that I needed a machine to keep my heart from committing suicide was at times more than I could bear, but the Xanax got me through.
I still can't believe I have a pacemaker (a defibrillator, specifically), but I've been trying to understand and accept that it will probably be what keeps me alive if I ever enter v-tach again -- which, in theory, shouldn't happen. Dr. Osman and a couple of his fellow cardiologists agreed that scar tissue from my former surgeries had built up and was now causing an erratic current to send irregular pacing signals. He told me that it' not too uncommon for people with my heart problems, and generally develops amongst those in my age category.
They put me to sleep and essentially poked all around my heart, trying to see what would cause it to enter v-tach. Thy burned a lot of the scar tissue away, hoping to end the irregular current. Then they put in the pacemaker and programmed it to shock me into a sinus rhythm should I ever enter v-tach, v-fib, or anything else.
Then they gave me meds to stabilize my heartbeat even more. So now I have a bunch of redundant systems in me because, as Dr. Osman said in so many words, "You are too young to die, so we're going to give you every possible cure so that if one fails, you will have another and another to save you."
One night while I was trying to drift off to sleep, I saw myself on the beach. I was wearing a little kerchief-like shirt that tied in the back, and it was red, and I had a white skirt. And my lover put her hands on my big scar and told me it was very beautiful, and then she put her hands over the new little scar where my pacemaker would be, and told me again that it was beautiful and I was beautiful. She went over all my scars, and then we made love. And as I fell asleep, I kept thinking, "It's okay, it's going to be okay."
So I will have a new scar, and if I press on my chest in the right spot, I will feel the little machine that might save me many times throughout the rest of my (hopefully) long life.
I'm very afraid, and yet at the same time so grateful that even though I could easily have gone into v-tach while asleep and alone, it happened during a time where I could receive medical care. I'm grateful to the brilliant men and women who understand so much about the human body that they were able to grant me years of life that had I been born even 10 years earlier, I would not have had.
I understand that my own life is very precious and very fragile. I should not spend it wastefully, which I so frequently do, hoping for ridiculous and idealistic things that will never come to me. I shouldn't spend time waiting for anyone because I just haven't got the time.
My life is too precious to be waiting around. I am not waiting for anyone anymore. I don't want to die empty-handed.
They've taken so many precautions that, baring incredibly bad luck, I won't have another episode of ventricular tachycardia.
For those of you who didn't hear, Saturday night while I was driving home from work, I was about a minute from my driveway when it was suddenly like someone pushed a button and my heart went into overdrive.
You all know I suffer from anxiety and I'm often debating whether or not I'm having heart attacks. I can't explain it, but I knew this was different. My body kind of told me. It was definitely a "holy shit" moment, and the blessed thing is that instead of plunging into panic, a pure human desire to live kicked in.
I drove the rest of the way, parked the car, and informed my parents. They told me I was having a panic attack and I should go try to get my mind off it. I didn't think so, but felt embarrassed enough from my last trip to the Sarasota ER to back down. This was maybe 6:30. But that will to live took over and I had them take me to the ER, where I arrived around 7:15. My mom stopped the car at the door and I got out.
Things started going black. I knew immediately that I needed to pass out in the waiting room rather than outside. It was probably the most difficult 10 or 20 steps of my life. Every step brought more darkness. I leaned all my weight on the doors, like they were 300 pounds each. They slowly swung open. I looked at the receptionist. I remember saying that I was about to pass out.
My next memory was being on a gurney. They were prepping me, asking me if I was alone. I remembered my mother and asked them to find her. I heard "v-tach, v-tach" and soon they were injecting things into my veins. I started to cry. I wondered if I was going to die. I knew what tachycardia was.
I was looking at doctors and nurses standing around me, watching was they directed each other. I was terrified. My mother was standing in the corner, watching my heartbeat on the monitors with wide, silent eyes. She made me nervous.
And suddenly I wasn't nervous. I was somewhere else. I was slipping away into a beautiful dream. My friends and my family were there with me. There was no pain or fear in me. I remembered, just for a few seconds, that I had arrived to this peace from a very bad place, but now there was nothing but flowers and trees and smiling faces and a deep-seated serenity. And then it all started to change again; instead of fading, suddenly I was back on the table with everyone gathered me around me.
"We lost her for a few seconds," I heard.
Did I die? I wanted that peace back, not this fear again.
But I hadn't "died"; while my heart was switching back from v-tach into sinus, the drop was so abrupt that for about six seconds, there was hardly any oxygen going to my brain.
"It's going to be okay," one of them told me. "We're getting your heart rate down. It's going to be okay."
I was skeptical, but I thought of that beautiful peace and felt a little better about dying. I could at least be assured that if I died that night in the ER, it would feel a lot like dreaming. For a few seconds my brain would broadcast happy thoughts, then quickly everything would fade to black and that would be end of my life. I a weird way, I kind of accepted it.
But obviously I didn't die. They ended the arrhythmia and immediately started their tests to determine what had gone wrong. It wasn't anxiety. They sent me in for a CT scan and I knew I just had to focus on being brave like I was five and going to my first day of school. After the scan, they eventually gave me a hospital room. The wonderful nurse I would later come to know as Margie made sure I was well-supplied with Xanax, being an anxiety suffer herself.
I don't remember the days anymore. They were supposed to transfer me to Holy Cross, but some internal politicking left me hanging until Wednesday when they sent me to apparently-renowned cardiologist Dr. Osman at Broward General. I knew I would need a pacemaker. I had cried about it a lot. It made me so angry; I was 23, and couldn't believe that so many things were happening to me all at once. I was on heart medication (amiodarone, FYI) to keep me from slipping back into v-tach and I was the only kid I knew who was going to also be on blood pressure medication for the next 60 years of my life. The thought that I needed a machine to keep my heart from committing suicide was at times more than I could bear, but the Xanax got me through.
I still can't believe I have a pacemaker (a defibrillator, specifically), but I've been trying to understand and accept that it will probably be what keeps me alive if I ever enter v-tach again -- which, in theory, shouldn't happen. Dr. Osman and a couple of his fellow cardiologists agreed that scar tissue from my former surgeries had built up and was now causing an erratic current to send irregular pacing signals. He told me that it' not too uncommon for people with my heart problems, and generally develops amongst those in my age category.
They put me to sleep and essentially poked all around my heart, trying to see what would cause it to enter v-tach. Thy burned a lot of the scar tissue away, hoping to end the irregular current. Then they put in the pacemaker and programmed it to shock me into a sinus rhythm should I ever enter v-tach, v-fib, or anything else.
Then they gave me meds to stabilize my heartbeat even more. So now I have a bunch of redundant systems in me because, as Dr. Osman said in so many words, "You are too young to die, so we're going to give you every possible cure so that if one fails, you will have another and another to save you."
One night while I was trying to drift off to sleep, I saw myself on the beach. I was wearing a little kerchief-like shirt that tied in the back, and it was red, and I had a white skirt. And my lover put her hands on my big scar and told me it was very beautiful, and then she put her hands over the new little scar where my pacemaker would be, and told me again that it was beautiful and I was beautiful. She went over all my scars, and then we made love. And as I fell asleep, I kept thinking, "It's okay, it's going to be okay."
So I will have a new scar, and if I press on my chest in the right spot, I will feel the little machine that might save me many times throughout the rest of my (hopefully) long life.
I'm very afraid, and yet at the same time so grateful that even though I could easily have gone into v-tach while asleep and alone, it happened during a time where I could receive medical care. I'm grateful to the brilliant men and women who understand so much about the human body that they were able to grant me years of life that had I been born even 10 years earlier, I would not have had.
I understand that my own life is very precious and very fragile. I should not spend it wastefully, which I so frequently do, hoping for ridiculous and idealistic things that will never come to me. I shouldn't spend time waiting for anyone because I just haven't got the time.
My life is too precious to be waiting around. I am not waiting for anyone anymore. I don't want to die empty-handed.