For the last year or so I have been trying to solve a mystery. Last November, when I was out at trivia night with some friends, my heart, out of the blue started racing like I was being chased by a bear. I wasn’t being chased by a bear. We weren’t even losing at trivia. I wasn’t feeing emotional. I wasn’t short of breath. I just could feel my heart pounding like a drumroll in my chest and it really scared me. I didn’t say anything to my friends. I, Queen of Minimization, just drove myself home. It didn’t abate at all once I got home and I started wondering how fast it was beating so I downloaded an app my trainer at the gym told me about to use to figure out my resting heart rate. It uses the camera and light on your phone to observe your pulse in your finger and I fired it up and looked at the numbers. A normal heart rate is 60-80 bpm. If you’re working out: 80-120bpm. If you’re working out and going for broke: >160. Mine was between 168-200bpm. Yes. 200bpm. Just sitting on my bed wondering what the hell was going on.  It would drop down to a normal rate for a few minutes and then fly back up to those scary numbers. I didn’t think this could be right so I downloaded another app to see if it was saying the same thing. It was. It was around 11 at night at this point and the episode started around 8:30 so I was getting a little scared. I didn’t want to wake up my brother to say my heart was freaking out and I needed to go to the hospital. My poor brother has dealt with taking enough family members to the hospital and I stubbornly didn’t feel bad enough to feel like I needed to go. I still wasn’t flushed or out of breath or over-emotional, mostly just confused and worried. I finally took myself to the bathroom and majestically, I learned, that the act of bearing down can reset your heart rate. Within a few minutes I was back to the 90-110bpm ranges and that was good enough. I relaxed enough to finally get to sleep and thought that was just that.

However, the next morning I was feeling really tired (like spent the day at Disneyland tired) and knew it would be pretty stupid to brush it all off like it was just a fluke. I asked a few friends that day if they’ve ever heard of this happening to anyone and they hadn’t. I asked my brothers if they’ve felt anything like this and they hadn’t. I was more mystified as the day went on. Also, every single person said the same thing while I was going over it with them: go see your doctor.

Here’s the thing; I deeply admire doctors and have many people that I love and respect that have gone into medicine. They are amazing. That being said, I really hate going to the doctor. When you’re overweight you can go into a dr’s office with an arrow sticking out of you neck and they will manage to turn the conversation about your treatment to dropping weight. No matter what. At least with the string of doctors I’ve had. It’s almost comedic. Hand to the sky – I have been lectured about my weight when going to the doctor’s office for the following reasons: ear infections, skin issues, broken toes, sore throats, eye irritations, inhalation, and many many more I can’t think of at the moment. It’s cartoonishly bad. “Thank you Dr. So&So. I am aware I’m overweight. Every magazine, television program, failed relationship, interaction with a stranger, shopping trip, and trip through the grocery line sonorously reminds me of that fact. I am aware my health will be improved if I drop weight. Yes, I am actively working on it. No, I do not want any more pamphlets about low fat diets and the benefits of cardiovascular exercise. I’m quite familiar with the mechanics of it all. I am a rational, literate human after all — What I do not understand is how my BMI (a profoundly flawed metric mind you) relates to the 60% compromise of the joint in my broken elbow.”

The idea of dealing with the stress of that infantilizing condescension from my doctor along with dealing with the stress of a heart that isn’t behaving as it should was almost overwhelming. But I’m a grown up who’s father died from a heart attack so I went anyway. She listened to me and it wasn’t too bad. My doctor had me wear a heart monitor for two weeks to see if they could capture an episode and I also went in for an echocardiogram to see if any damage was done and both of those tests came back clean and normal. Not a blip outside the norm. So guess what – they thought it must be because of the weight and my blood pressure.

I did not like these findings. It didn’t feel right but I humbled myself (I do not have a medical degree after all) I went on meds but also started making every lifestyle change to get off of them because I really, REALLY hated the idea of being dependent on a pharmaceutical to feel normal. I still do. My feelings for Big Pharma are vast, dark, and profound. I don’t like participating in the creepy hostage situation they have going with most of the Western World. I do, however, love Science and hallow advances in actual treatments meant to truly help people instead of making them dependent on a drug and take their money. So I chose to believe the best of this particular situation and agreed to take the meds. Part of my deal with the doctor was that I wanted a referral to start working with a therapist as well. I, at that time, believed it was related to some of the incredible amounts of stress I was having to manage at my new job and wanted to address the issue from that perspective as well. It wouldn’t kill me to take the med in the meantime while worked on and resolved what I believed was *really* the issue.

Sidenote: Therapy is AWESOME and I strongly encourage anyone and everyone with a mind to keep healthy (that’s all of you) to make it part of their health regime. We don’t think twice about working with a trainer at the gym to improve our physical health so why do we go all ho-humish about going to see a therapist? They’re amazing and my life is exponentially better for involving them in it.

Three months later though, even with the meds and talk therapy, I had another episode. This time I went to urgent care but the episode was over before they could hook me up on an EKG so it just looked like I was being melodramatic and that I had Anxiety. However after the 1st episode, I bought myself an Apple Watch and set an alarm on it so if my bpm gets above a certain rate, it lets me know and I can do what I can to calm down and bear down etc. Also, I had the episode on record, but apparently it that wasn’t enough to look closer and they put me on a 2nd blood pressure med. That’s easier I suppose. They didn’t ask how therapy was going…

Then, 3 months later, *another* episode. This time I was picking up my niece and nephew at jujitsu and I had to get someone to come get them and then get someone else to take me to urgent care and, again, the episode abated before I got on the EKG so the doctor at urgent care diagnosed me with panic attacks, asked if I wanted a prescription for anxiety (I didn’t. My CBD oil was doing the trick for me just fine and if I were to start on one, I’d want my therapist to prescribe it, not an urgent care doctor that had known me all of 5 minutes) and sent me on my way.

THEN – this last Sunday I was sitting at home enjoying a mellow Sunday evening and my heart started racing again. I gave it about 15 minutes and finally gave in asking my brother to take me to urgent care. I got there and while I was checking in the sweet cashier girl asked the admitting nurse to come give me a once over and she hooked me up to her heart rate monitor (that little finger clip thingy) and it shot up to 197bpm (just like I had just told her it was) and the nurse very non-chalantly said “Oh – you need to go to the ER. We can’t help you here.” and then turned around like our conversation was finished. No offer for a wheelchair, no offer to call someone, just done. So, totally mystified, I walked my palpitating self down to the other side of the hospital, told the admitting nurse in the ER the exact same thing, was hooked up to an EKG 2 min later. FINALLY had a print out of a pulse rate of 197 (it peaked at 208bpm that time) and was in a hospital bed in the ER being treated within another 5 min. When the nurse was rolling me down the hallway all of the other nurses that got the call were saying “This is the SVT? She’s so calm…” I didn’t know what being an “SVT” was but yes, I was calm because I had done this so many times before and was half expecting to be told to just take a few breaths, eat some celery and just rest.

Within minutes though I was in a hospital bed with an IV getting a medication called adenosine that literally reset my heart. I have been thinking about this experience all week; the magnitude of it and the almost endless metaphorical implications of it that I’ll probably get to those in another post. What I will say now is that it was the strangest thing I have ever felt. The whole med team working on me said “You’re going to feel really weird for a few seconds but then you’re going to be all right” and they were right. The second they gave it to me I said “Guys – I feel really weird!”. It was like a bit of cold water that I felt go in my hand, up my arm, go around my heart and then shoot down to all of my extremities. Within a minute my heart rate went from 197 down to 104.

This whole time I was running down the last year to the ER doctor as concisely as I could with all pertinent details and when I got to the part about the urgent care doctor thinking I had anxiety he literally scoffed. He scoffed and then asked me “Who told you that?”. I didn’t remember the doctor’s name, I just told him he was upstairs in urgent care. He then unfolded the EKG printout that had the scribble of my heart rate, turned it around to show me and said “You cannot imagine this. This isn’t in your head. This isn’t anxiety. This is an anatomical issue with your heart and God willing, I am going to help you figure it out. When I listen to you I don’t hear anxiety, I hear an intelligent woman that it trying to figure out why her heart is beating too fast.” and I can’t tell you how strangely vindicated and validated I felt hearing that.

From there they started ALL the tests. When it comes to your heart, Kaiser, like a responsible provider checks down ALL the boxes to make sure the diagnosis is right and that, as I learned, takes some time. They took blood samples, they took urine samples, they took all the samples. After an hour or so the same ER doctor that was very good at listening (who was quite handsome and had the speaking voice of a young Morgan Freedman) came in to tell me that he liked my numbers so far but I was going to need a series of blood tests that they were going to have to space out every 6 hours, a stress test, an x-ray, and an echocardiogram. There, in the ER, is where they told me my new diagnosis: supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). Yeah, it was a mouthful for me too. The ER nurses were super awesome though and even helped me learn how to pronounce it. It essentially means that sometimes my heart’s electronics short out and cause it to beat waaaay faster than it needs to. My good friend is one of the head librarians at Western University of Medicine and gave me a whole bunch of reputable resources to learn about it which I fully consumed over the next few days.  The causes are wide and varied, none of which really applies to me (extended tobacco use, extended drug use, extended alcohol abuse etc). My cardiologist later told me that I could have been 100lb wood-dwelling vegetarian and I would still have this issue, that I was born with these kind of heart cells and that it’s better just to focus on management/solutions instead of dwelling on the cause. I agree with him.

Back to the ER-

I went for my x-ray and like all good x-ray techs the second I got wheeled and started getting up she asked me if I was pregnant. I said “I am literally menstruating right now.” (which I was. perfect storm, no?) and the tech asking said with just as much candor and gusto “Me too!” and we high fived. There was a second or two of much needed laughter and the tech in the booth said “I hope all our patients tonight are as cool as you.” to which I replied “Me too!” and we shared some more laughter. Apparently experiencing profound medical duress really puts me in touch with my comedic timing.

Getting all the necessary blood tests at the correct times meant staying overnight in the hospital which I did not enjoy the thought of. Some amazing friends of mine came to the ER to sit with me and bring me burritos and tea and make me laugh through the ridiculousness of it all but when they finally admitted me at 11 at night, I had to say goodbye to them and when they wheeled me away I got really scared. The last time I spent the night in a hospital it was at my mom’s bedside holding her hand all night and knowing she was most likely going to die in the morning, which she did.

I got wheeled to my room, all set up, and once everyone left the room I promptly started to ball my eyes out. I didn’t know what else to do. Hospitals have this horrible way of making me feel so isolated and helpless. Think about it – you go into this painfully impersonal space with people you don’t know, are asked to change out of your clothes and give away your nakedness to strangers in this handy though shapeless gown, they stick needles in the parts of your body you need to move to do anything at all so essentially stab yourself at least 3 times an hour on top of all the other shots and blood draws they do, and you, to a degree feel held captive there. Not by the people persay, but by the situation/circumstance.  To compound all of that you also know that every person helping you in that hospital only wants to do just that and they are some of your best and last chances to figure out what the hell is going on so you feel guilty for all of your reluctance to being there when you should be feeling grateful. Mix all that with keen memories of your mom dying and its perfect cocktail for Lizzie tears. Just many many many feelings.

Needless to say I didn’t sleep well and I woke up the next morning at 5 am to someone poking a needle in me for the next round of blood tests. It is not the most pleasant way to start your day but I was trying to make the best of it so I ordered breakfast, did my best to make use of the hygiene kit they provided me (as another side note, trying to comb my hair with one of those disposable combs they use for picture day at school was a laughable experience). I tired though because didn’t want to sport the Robert Smith look if there was a chance Handsome ER Dr would be popping in. He never did but it was a happy thought over the two days.

Throughout the day I did my stress test and passed with flying colors and both sets of subsequent blood tests came back normal for which I was very grateful. All this was all done by 12pm and I was just waiting on the echocardiogram techs to come by so we could wrap that up. It was the last piece of data the doctor needed to decide if I got to go home or not and I was SO I was ready to go.

I waited and waited and waited and the nurse told me that they’re really behind schedule. The test was ordered the night before so how backed up were they? We were closing in on 24 hours. Around 4 pm I started getting panicky because I wanted to go home so bad so I buzzed for the nurse again who told me I was most likely staying one more night. That’s when my angry white lady kicked in and I asked to speak to a manager.

A few minutes later the Charge Nurse came in and told me the exact same thing my nurse had (which I wasn’t happy about) and got to see me burst into tears again. Frustrated tears this time. Like the ugly, can’t talk through them kind. All I wanted to do was go home and I felt like I could come back fro an echocardiogram. I’ve popped in to cardiology for one before, I could do it again. That, however, as the Charge Nurse explained to me would be leaving against medical advice which is the surest way to never get good hospital care again.

So I took a shower, and resigned myself to one more night of broken sleep full of beeping machines, flashing lights, and periodic needle pricks. My brothers, sister in law, her mom, and another sister friend came that night to cheer me up with phone chargers, proper feminine hygiene products, and non-hospital food. It was a lovely evening and exactly what I needed. The next day was finally getting my echocardiogram, them reviewing it and finding it beautifully normal, and being discharged by 12:00pm with a new prescription and a whole new perspective about many, many things.

My overall feelings were of gratitude; grateful that I have a job that provides me such good health benefits, grateful I live within easy driving distance of a world class hospital facility, grateful for the hard work and education of all the people in that building who work so hard at all hours to help people who need it most, grateful that I got to walk out in the first place. Not everyone who goes into a hospital gets to leave. Grateful for supportive family that was waiting outside with hugs and and smiles for me, grateful for finally knowing what was going on with me and having a name to it and knowing I’m not alone with this weirdness. So many things.

I have a feeling this is the beginning of a new chapter in the Life of Lizzie and Her Corporeal Existence and not the end of one but I’ll keep you all posed. For now, know I’m doing well, in the hands of super-capable awesome doctors that did not condescend or belittle me, even once, during my stay, and that I’m ready for whatever is next.