Another Episode

So, after a few weeks of no heart related problems and the joy of not having to wear the monitor anymore, I found myself with heart racing at 2am on Wednesday morning. I tried all the things my mom and my doctor have told me to do (they're called Vagal maneuvers) such as coughing and holding my breath and while they helped a bit, nothing seemed to stop the fast heartbeats for very long. I gave in and took some anxiety medication and finally calmed down enough to go to sleep. Sadly, when I woke up, my heart still seemed to be going fast. Not racing off the charts, but fast enough that I noticed it. It's a vicious cycle, I notice it going fast, I start paying attention to it and worrying and then can't really get it to slow down because I keep neurotically checking it to see if it's slowed down and all and when it hasn't, the worrying keeps going.

I went out to meet KJ for brunch which helped take my mind off it a bit, but as soon as I was alone again, the worrying ramped up. I had some errands to run but when I got home I paged my mom because she's very good at "talking me down" from this. She did, I calmed down enough and took a bit of a nap which I think helped.

No problems sleeping last night, but I woke up this morning and in that kind of "OMG, I feel fine, but let me take my pulse because what if it's still fast?!" mentality, was sure that my heartrate was a bit fast. My mom checked it and told me it was fine, so that helped. I think a fair bit of this is mental and I really need to be better at talking myself out of my freak-outs. I'm also working on actually telling people when I feel like something is wrong instead of keeping it inside and worrying myself blue about it. I mentioned to KJ that I my heart felt a bit fast and I was rather anxious about it, I told Jon AND I told both my parents. For me, that's quite a bit of progress. I did also move up my doctor's appointment. I was supposed to see her way off in July but I figured since I have the monitor off and if I need to be put on a beta-blocker, sooner is better than later. So, I see her next week which is a bit comforting.

I really wish all this would stop. I would really like my life to go back to the way it was say, at the beginning of May. It's been almost two months of this. At the same time, I need to keep reminding myself that it could be WAY worse. It is a normal rhythm. I have no pain, no fainting, no nothing like that, it's just fast. They can do things to slow my heart down (beta blockers to start, some relatively minor surgery if that doesn't work) and that's that. Ok, so, surgery isn't the most thrilling idea, but hopefully the medication will solve the problem and I'll look back on all this in two months and it'll just be a blip in 2009.

In other news, working madly on the reading contest. I'm in the process of reading three books right now (this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon). I'm digging my way through War and Peace, am almost finished with Dracula which I'd never read before (I am the worst English major ever I think), and am still working on The Children of Henry VIII. I made the mistake of going to Shaman Drum last week with Kathleen and bought three books then and then got two more yesterday at Borders. Bookstores are dangerous places, but I know it could be worse.

I'm really looking forward to going to Phoenix for Josh and Julie's wedding (Jon's brother and sister-in-law to be) even though I'm sure it'll be a million degrees down there. I really like his family and know we'll have fun. I'm also REALLY looking forward to the house we've rented and the fact that we have our own pool for the week. Fun!

Also doing some more serious thinking about my back-to-school tattoo for August. I think KJ and Kate are going to come with me and get ones too, so that's fun. I have two designs in mind, it's just a question of which one to get this time.

Trying to review the new Dave Matthews is difficult. I am trying to separate the fact that I could care less about the DMB (mostly because it seemed like everyone I knew in college was nuts about DMB and I didn't get what the big deal was) from whether or not the new album is good from an objective sense. It's tough. I'm really trying to be fair...