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...

Just a summary...

I know it's been forever since I last posted, I'll try to remedy that this summer but I'm not promising anything. So, an update of things possibly interesting and probably not-so interesting:

• I am still wearing the heart monitor. I can not WAIT to be rid of it. I've made it through almost 30 days of wearing it and Friday night I will be FREE! I know it was a good decision to go through wearing it and I did have an episode about two weeks ago which got recorded which is the whole point of wearing it, but I hate, hate, hate wearing it. Not only do I have four electrodes and a little disc the circumfrence of a coffee mug attached to me at all times, the stupid adhesive on the electrodes makes me break out in a rash. A rash I have now had for over four weeks. A rash I can't get rid of until I can stop wearing the stupid electrodes. It's agony. It's sort of like having chicken pox all over your torso but for four weeks. Needless to say, if you hear rejoicing on Friday night, you'll know who it is.
• School is over for the summer (yay!) though they didn't have contracts for us to sign which makes me somewhat nervous since there was talk of layoffs. I like to think I'm fairly safe since I'm the head of the department, but I'd still have felt a lot better walking out with a signed contract in my hand.
• I have been invited to over 15 graduation parties for seniors. I don't think I've ever had quite so full a social calendar. It's flattering at the same time though, and I'll really miss those seniors. Of course now they're allowed to be friends with me on facebook (that was my rule, I'm not your friend on facebook until you graduate) so I get to hear all about what's going on...
• I started my Constitutional Law class today. It's just an online class through the continuing ed program at WCC, but I'm still excited about it. I took a Journalism Law class when I was at MSU and LOVED it (totally nerdy, I know) so I'm looking forward to this. If it goes well I'll probably take the Evidence Law classes they offer too. Who knows, maybe I'll give the LSAT a shot...It's something I've always kind of thought about, so maybe I'll just do it and see what happens.
• I've started running again (yay!). Bummed that I had to miss the 5k I was going to do back in early June, but I've set my sights on doing a 10k in November. It felt really good to be running yesterday, and if I'm going to all these grad parties, I better start running again. Seriously, the amount of food at these things is nuts.
• Jon and I have our tickets for Arizona to go to Josh and Julie's wedding. I'm a little nervous about Phoenix in late July though. I am SO not a hot-weather person. Good thing the house we're staying at has a private pool. I think I'll be in it all the time (provided my stupid hives go away and I can wear a bathing suit without everyone thinking I have some awful skin disease.)
• I think I'm going to do some photography at Kelly's fashion show. She just graduated from FIT and is trying to put together a show of her stuff for late summer/the fall. I think that would be really cool, though I've never shot anything like that before. Worth a try :)
• I don't remember if I ever mentioned it, but in addition to writing for Revolt, I've been writing for Chris Schwegler's site. If you've never heard me mention him, he's a photographer in the Detroit area that gets to go to ALL the big stuff. Coldplay. Eminem. Elton John. Billy Joel. Aerosmith. Green Day. So, I've salivated over his photos for a number of years now and finally just emailed him one day and asked him if he needed anyone else, either as a writer or photographer. So, he hired me as a writer! I've got quite a few reviews up at his site now but one of the most exciting things was that I got to shoot the Lily Allen show for him! My photos and review of the show are here. I put in requests for a number of other shows this summer, I hope at least a few of them come through. It was pretty damn cool getting to photograph Lily Allen though. Totally fun show :)
  

Well, I think that's about all the big news for the moment. I'm keeping busy, that's for sure. Not too much time yet to get totally bored :)

I am quite ready for things to go back to normal

So, for the last week and a half, a bit of my life has been totally upside down. Most of you already know this, but for those that don't, here's the story.

Last Saturday I was admitted to the ER with a racing heart. We're not talking it being a little fast, at it's peak it was probably around 200 bpm (it should normally be around 70 or so). I was absolutely terrified. I am a generally healthy person. Occasionally a cold, cat allergies and such, but nothing majorly wrong with me. So, when your heart is going that fast, it's really, really scary. My mom took me to the ER, they did all sorts of blood tests (thyroid, potassium levels, etc.), an EKG (told them nothing other than my heart beat was normal, just fast) and made sure I wasn't pregnant (I'm not). Over time as I became more calm, my heart rate went down and they discharged me telling me that I need to see my regular doctor and probably will have to wear an event monitor for a while. I was so happy that my heart had stopped racing (especially since it had been going on for a few days before I finally said anything or did anything about it).

Unfortunately, it happened again on Sunday night. I woke up from a fairly deep sleep with my heart going quite fast. My mom was able to get me to calm down and lower my heart rate but then I was afraid to go back to sleep, so I was up for most of the night. Monday morning, I was a total wreck. Not only did I have to go to school on about 2 hours of sleep, but my anxiety level was through the roof. Again, my mom got me to calm down somewhat (I really think the anxiety piece of this doesn't help) provided me with some anti-anxiety medication and sent me off to school. I called my PCP's office to set up an appointment wiht the overwehlming hope that they'd see me that day (again, I was terrified and wanted someone to help this stop!). Of course my PCP wasn't in that day but the nurse did call her to talk about what to do. They tell me that it could be because my potassium is quite low and to eat more potassium-rich foods for the next week. WEEK. Then get my blood drawn on Monday (the 18th) and see the doctor on the 19th. This was TOTALLY not the answer I wanted. I really thought I was being blown off. So, of course, I called my mom (who has had heart-racing episodes herself, is a nurse and knows about this sort of thing). She said that it was actually a good possibility that the low-potassium was the cause which made me feel a bit better. So, I've spent the last week trying to boost my potassium. Unfortunately, it hasn't been a completely episode-free week. Tuesday night I had a mini-episode (again, my mom talked me out of it and Atavan helped too) and I'm still quite anxious about it all. I do hope that's all it is and the anxiety goes away soon though. It's very scary. And because I'm hyper-concious of what my heart is doing, it makes me nervous if it seems even just a teeny bit fast (which then starts the vicious cycle.)

I just want my life to go back to normal! I'm afraid to do anything that can get my heart rate up for fear that it won't go back down, so, no working out and definitely no running (so much for that 5k I was training for). I feel like a sloth, but a scared sloth.

I really hope this goes away for good soon. I'm tired of being terrified that it'll happen again at any minute. Sigh.