This heart of mine.

 For years, I have dealt with heart issues. I have always been someone who exercises and has generally kept myself in shape. In high school, I had dance competitions every weekend, and when I wasn't practicing five hours every day, I was performing at sports events. By the time my son had his first birthday, I had dropped all 41 pounds of giving in to midnight meat and chocolate milk cravings. During nursing school, I didn't have any time left for dance classes, but I got really into running and I have even signed up for my first marathon. Yet, despite all the years of keeping my cardiovascular system healthy, I always felt like my heart just couldn't keep up with how much I pushed myself. After constant EKG's, random panic attacks and palpitations that kept me up at night, I finally went to the doctor and got a diagnosis: Wolff Parkinson White.

 I really had to dig back into my nursing brain for this one. Heart blocks? Got it. Sinus rhythms? Yup, I know it. I can M.O.N.A. a patient right out of an acute coronary, but WPW? Yeah, I would have to read up on this one again. It was clear when I saw my EKG and saw the delta wave that appeared at the start of my QRS complex (sorry non-nursing audience), and I immediately had a flashback to the image of my mother fighting her vent after she had open heart surgery. 

I CANNOT HAVE OPEN HEART SURGERY IN MY MID-TWENTIES. 

When I got my diagnosis, it was right at the start of my last term of nursing school, and I was literally reading my notes in between the physician explaining referrals and symptoms, so I was not at a point to just dive into this situation to get it taken care of. Flash forward five months, degree finished and NCLEX passed, and my symptoms of pain, shortness of breath and insane palpitations have finally driven me to a point of facing my fear and just getting it all handled. 

The cardiologist scheduled me to wear a heart monitor for a month, which I creatively hid at work under a tied up flannel & pulled it off as a "Daisy Duke" look. I couldn't go on stage (my own courtesy for everyone at the club), which really took a big cut out of my money. But I dealt with it and figured I might be put on some sort of beta-blocker and call it a day. 

That was not happening.

I got a call from an Electrophysiotherapist, who specializes in fixing just this sort of problem, and he suggested I get a cardiac ablation. For those of you who don't know what that is, let me just insert a picture to give you an idea.

Basically, they are taking a catheter, sticking it into my femoral artery, and burning of the extra pathway that my heart decides to take when it makes a full forced beat. It is kind of like it taking a detour, but that detour is seriously fucking with my quality of life. 

I was so scared to schedule the procedure, but I decided to just say fuck it and get it over with sooner rather than later, since it IS the busy season for the club and I am ready to get over the hump of going home with zero dollars (which happened my last night working before the ablation). I am not missing out on good money, or a possible job offer, just to have to take off a few weeks for recovery as soon as I start. 

Let me tell you, there is nothing like filling out advanced directive paperwork to put shit into perspective. Furthermore, there is nothing like a very painful, scary and conscious heart procedure to snap you into reality. I am not exaggerating when I say that I thought I might actually die on that table. 

I had to stay awake during the procedure because I am sure the anesthesia would have slowed my heart rate too much and they would not have been able to fully induce me into SVT (basically, a very high heart rate) and irritate my heart rhythm enough to actually catch the abnormal pathway acting up and stop it in its tracks. I was absolutely NOT prepared for the experience I endured. The medication had me violently shaking, almost as if I was having a seizure. I could see my heart rate on the monitor climb up to 180 (my normal is 50, and any healthy person's should be 60-100), and I remember dealing with it fluctuating for about 2 hours before they were able to get a handle on the pathway to cauterize. Then came the heparin drip. If you have ever received heparin, you wouldn't forget the feeling. In nursing school, we are taught to warn our patients of the burning sensation, but now that I have experienced the pain, I would say that "burning sensation" is more like a wildfire being spread very fast throughout your veins. LITERALLY. I finally broke once the drip started and I could feel the tears start to flow, but I was not allowed to move. I couldn't even take a deep breath, which is my normal compensatory method for the hard palpitations. I felt trapped and scared. 

After four long hours, they finally decided to stop.

FOUR FUCKING HOURS. 

I was told that it is a real possibility that I may have to have it done again because they discovered a second abnormal pathway (of the very small chance of that being the case, it was indeed mine) and they couldn't activate it. For now, it was taken care of and I just needed to rest in recovery and be careful not to bleed out from my catheter site. 

Rest? How about recovering mentally from what I just went through? If I have to give this a positive swing (something I am learning from Mr. Tie Tuesday), I am glad I went through it firsthand because you really cannot prepare a patient for the feelings of being awake during a procedure and what they might endure. Not even if you read all of the medication side effects, or possible risks of the surgery, you just do not know unless you have been on that operating table and feeling a fucking catheter burn inside of your beating heart. I can be a good reference if I am ever working in the PACU. 

After 6 more hours of lying flat on my back, I was discharged and sent home with a crazy pressure dressing and directions on how not to bleed out and die (basically). That was three days ago. Today, I am finally feeling okay to walk around and move about on my own. Even though I have help here with my loveless boyfriend to take care of my little one, I always have that feeling like I am alone and I cannot just lay down and recover. I need to be productive, even if I have to take off the next few weeks of work (yay?). 

So here I am, blogging in a very clean living room (ugh, finally) and a glass of red, just relaxing (recovering?). Blogging makes me feel productive, though writing about the actual physical aspects of my heart is just one side of the beating it has taken this week. The emotional part... well, I guess that's an entirely different blog post all on its own.