A-fib rears its ugly head after five years - Fate Fairies - book version
This entry was posted on 1/16/2012 1:45 AM and is filed under Fate Fairies:Fate Fairies - book version.
I should have seen the signs - the symptoms. Heide and I had just spent a couple arduous years caring for my mother. I had moved in to her house for the last six months of her life to care for her - putting my life on hold. A year earlier, I had been in a wheelchair myself for circulation and genetic blood and circulation issues. And, it had been around five years since my bout with my "intolerable" heart arrythmia - the evil partner of the genetic blood condition. But after the Mom ordeal, I was a wreak.
On a beautiful August day in the summer of 2001, Heide and I attended an ambulance colleague's wedding at the Threshery Park between Janesville and Edgerton. Threshery Park is a place where old farm and industrial equipment is displayed and demonstrated. They offer to let you get married on an old steam engine of your choice. It was a rather hot day. I should have stayed in the shade more. We took the opportunity to stay at Mom's house the night after the wedding. It was a good excuse to check in on the property as Mom had died that past late March and we now owned the house.
About six in the morning, I was jolted out of bed by a pounding in my chest. I knew immediately it was the extremely temperamental Atrial Fibrillation rearing its ugly head after a five year absence. In my case, it is unmanageable if left untreated. Some people live with various versions of it just fine. I however, crumble like wet cardboard. My heart (no pun intended) sank as the memory of the first episode five years earlier hit me between the eyes. It was treated then with medications and a five-day hospital stay in intermediate intensive care.
Because it had been so long since the condition had occurred, I did not have medications on hand to simmer the condition down. This would come later in the evolution. Heide drove me to my Madison hospital while I fell into disrepair.
Once in the emergency room, to my surprise there was no talk of a hospital stay. "You have progressed to cardioversion (a shock)," the ER doc said with an ominous glower.
The nurse explained as she shaved my chest for the electrodes that I was too far along in the condition to mess with a week in the hospital hoping meds would fix it. I would need a shock. Then she explained that the shock would stop my heart and then they would wait for it to start again....presumably with a good rhythm. I was so sick by that time, I really did not care. And one more tid-bit of information came from the nurse; I would feel and look like I had been hit by lightning.
This was all so contrary to my ambulance low-level training where we started stopped hearts with a shock. I would later learn in upper level ambulance paramedic training that they do this stopping of the heart and then starting, cardioversion procedure all the time to patients. Regardless, this fine day I was to be zapped.
It did not dawn on me until the next day, that they basically had killed me and then....hoped I would come back to life. And, the nurse was right, the next day I had a red mark on my chest like a lightning strike.
With a breif parting lecture from the ER doc, I learned I could indeed live with this condition and I should not panic. The lecture helped, and has always stuck in my mind as the condition has attacked me more often in my older age.
That next day I felt like I had been hit by a truck. But, the temperamental rhythm was gone and the good old "lub-dub" pulse was back - at least for awile.
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
