Now For A Little Explanation...

In regards to the previous post, I suppose it deserves some explanation. If anyone is curious about either of the diagnoses you can read about them on emedicine. It's my favorite medical website and is usually the most accurate, it's free to become a member and has great resources.

Aortic Valve Insufficiency - note that the description here is a bit more bleak than the doctor made it out to be

Tachycardia - The link talks about tachycardia in kids, but gives a good idea of what it is.

Several weeks ago I began having these "episodes" where it felt like my heart was beating so fast and intense that it was going to explode. The episodes would last only a few seconds and happened about once a week. Gradually they began to increase in their frequency. Under normal circumstances I would have blown it off, but my mom's side of the family has a history of major heart problems and then there is the heart problem that E was born with that is hereditary. I also had a very dear friend that I went to high school with pass away suddenly in May as a result of complications of an enlarged heart, a condition he never knew about. So I decided to go to the doctor. He set me up with a cardiologist so I could get an event monitor. Basically you wear the event monitor for 30 days and you record anything that you find abnormal. The machine always monitors you and records on it's own if it notices that there are problems. The machine holds up to three recordings, when it records you have to call a number (from a land line) and download the information to the monitoring company. Then a nurse comes on the phone and usually says "there is no immediate need to call the doctor" which is extremely comforting, let me tell you!

I had been doing good, I only had to records myself a couple times the first week and it self recorded a couple of times. Last weekend was particularly hard though, it seemed every time I turned around it was recording. It record seven times alone in a period of five hours on Sunday morning. So this continues until Wednesday, the day of my orientation/registration. It recorded twice as I was walking in (if it self-records it makes a loud beep once every minute until you download) so I decided just to take the machine off because there was no way I was going to have access to a land line for several hours and I didn't want it to keep beeping.

Well, about 10:30 in the morning I get a call from my cardiologists office. Apparently the monitoring company had notified the doctor because of concerns that arose out of the numerous recordings over the weekend. The nurse I talked to said that the cardiologist was concerned and wanted me in his office first thing in the morning to have a stress test. So I'm sitting in the middle of some college building in the middle of the North Texas campus, with my event monitor in my purse, on the verge of a complete meltdown. It's funny because I'm used to dealing with health problems with my kids, but not me. And my heart! Uggghh! So I call my mom and ask her if she would come with me in the morning, call my work to tell them I would be in late, clean myself up and head back in to orientation.

So mom and I went in to the doctor, I got to jump on one of those machines that has a belt on it that moves at some ungodly speed that you have to try to walk on, ummm, what's it called...oh yeah, a TREADMILL. Completely foreign concept to me! They also did an echocardiogram, basically a sonogram on your heart. At the end the nurse practioner said, "Well, the results of the stress test are normal, the doctor will be in shortly to discuss everything with you." So I was relieved, a little frustrated though, because I was wondering how I could have completely misjudged my episodes as problems and thinking that I was just completely out of shape!

So the doctor walks in, extremely nice man by the way (thanks Phyllis!) and continued to echo what the nurse practioner had said about the results of the stress test. Then he said that the information from the event monitor showed that I had a very high heart rate (tachycardia). Apparently, there had been several instances when I was at rest (on the couch, computer, asleep in bed) where my heart rate exceeded 170 beats per minute. He said that he was going to put me on beta-blockers to try to get it under control. Then he looked at the echocardiogram and told me that I had a "leaky aortic valve" (aortic valve insufficiency). Normal hearts pump all the blood out of the left ventricle to supply the lungs with oxygen, mine pumps blood out, but also allows some blood to flow back through the valve. The doctor said that on a scale of mild, moderate and severe, mine was moderate. Then he proceeded to say that there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it at this point. He said that eventually, when the damage progresses to severe I will have to undergo surgery to replace the valve. There is no indication as to when that will be, I guess it just depends on my body. The doctor did say that it shouldn't be for several years. Until then I will continue to see him every six months initially, and then annually. I'm also supposed to notify him if I start retaining fluid or have problems with dizziness...apparently, from my research, that means that I will have started going in to heart failure.

He did say that it was very uncommon in women my age and that it was probably a congenital defect that I was born with. I have since begged my brothers to get a check up, my mom also needs to, but I doubt that's going to happen. The interesting thing is that the two problems are unrelated to each other. The tacychardia will be relatively easy to deal with as long as I keep it under control with medicine, but if I had not had that problem, I would not have found out about the valve thing.

So that's the story of the last couple of days. I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to feel. I have prided myself in my ability to "stay strong", so I'm having a hard time admitting to myself that I am actually scared. I know that it's the newness of things, but I feel like my heart is a time bomb just waiting to explode at any moment. I feel like I'm walking on pins and needles afraid to overexert myself, even though the doctor did say that I need to excercise to help improve the tachycardia. And no, the doctor did not say that any of this is due to my weight, but it does certainly make me want to fix a lot of things.

Please just pray for peace for me.