Oh, so that's what the downtown Austin ER is like
So over the last week or so, I've been having fluttering in my chest at night. I didn't really want to think about it, so I ignored it (yes, I'm that girl). Tonight, my parents and I were up I'm Austin for a dinner celebrating my little brother's engagement. I started feeling them again during dinner, and they got especially bad as we were walking the couple of blocks to the car.
Stopped at a stoplight, I felt for my pulse in my neck, and felt a very incredibly distinct wrong rythmn (BUMP. BUMP. bumpbumpbump.) that wasn't itself regular in its irregularity. I mention to my dad that my heartbeat is irregular, so he feels my neck and insists that we go to the ER for an EKG.
So we do that. The EKG shows that I was doing a premature ventricular contraction, which is apparently pretty common, although the ability to feel it or have it be pounding the way it was for me tonight is very uncommon. None of the many blood and urine tests they ran came back with anything, and the next step is an echo test and a stress test to look at the valves and arteries in my heart. So that's fun.
Worst part of all of this, not even kidding a little bit, is that I can't have caffeine until the echo and stress tests. I feel more sorry for everyone around me than I do for myself, because too much blood in my caffeine system makes me an angry panda, but apparently caffeine abuse can cause PVC, although they all agree that my two cup a day habit is probably not much of a mitigating factor.
So that's my late night news.
Stopped at a stoplight, I felt for my pulse in my neck, and felt a very incredibly distinct wrong rythmn (BUMP. BUMP. bumpbumpbump.) that wasn't itself regular in its irregularity. I mention to my dad that my heartbeat is irregular, so he feels my neck and insists that we go to the ER for an EKG.
So we do that. The EKG shows that I was doing a premature ventricular contraction, which is apparently pretty common, although the ability to feel it or have it be pounding the way it was for me tonight is very uncommon. None of the many blood and urine tests they ran came back with anything, and the next step is an echo test and a stress test to look at the valves and arteries in my heart. So that's fun.
Worst part of all of this, not even kidding a little bit, is that I can't have caffeine until the echo and stress tests. I feel more sorry for everyone around me than I do for myself, because too much blood in my caffeine system makes me an angry panda, but apparently caffeine abuse can cause PVC, although they all agree that my two cup a day habit is probably not much of a mitigating factor.
So that's my late night news.