As you all probably know by now, I am invincible. That's right, I'm completely impervious to illness, injury and the like. Of course I don't go around flaunting my invincibility (how rude), but it's there.
So naturally, when I started having what I considered to be an irregular heartbeat last week, I ignored it, figuring it to be a fluke of some sort, probably related to not getting enough sleep. It wasn't like there was any pain or anything. Every once in a while, my heart would feel like it was beating really hard. I could feel it up in my throat, like my heart had moved up there for a minute, yelled something, and then went back to whatever it's usually doing. Whole thing would last less than a second.
A few days go by, and I'm still getting these. What's more, they seemed to be getting more frequent. So yesterday I called up my doctor for an appointment. I figure he'll listen, nod wisely, tell me what's going on, and send me on my merry way. Instead when we get to the part of making a doctor appointment where they ask what the problem is, I get launched from the receptionist to the doctor's assistant, who asks me a few questions, puts me on hold, and then comes back and tells me that I have to go to the emergency room. I had already assured her that I was in no pain, there was no difficulty breathing, no tightening of the chest. I probably should have brought up the invincibility thing.
Anyway, after assuring the assistant that I would in fact go to the emergency room right then, I hung up and tried to decide if I would go to the emergency room. See, I'm not real fond of emergency rooms. They smell funny, and frequently make me remove my pants for reasons I don't entirely understand (like those guys at the bus station). Plus they cost money, and while I enjoy spending money on myself, this is not the way I like to do it. Basically, I felt like this was getting blown out of proportions. Still, the irregular heartbeats were happening more often now, so it seemed like something I should get checked out.
So an hour later I'm laying on a table with a needle in my arm, little sticky squares monitoring my heart, and no pants on, regretting the decision. They looked at everything and tell me I'm not going to die (duh - invincible). I have premature atrial contractions, or PACs, which is a fancy way of saying that sometimes, one of my atria decides to beat too soon. Just to be sure though, they make me wait around for all the tests they wanted to run on my blood (all fine except for the thyroid, which I'm still waiting on). Then, fours hours later, they make me wear a little version of the heart monitor home.
So as I type this, I have a little heart monitor on my belt, and eight little squares stuck to various parts of my torso. When my heart skips a beat, I push a button and (usually) record it in my log. At the end of the day I turn it in. Then in a couple of days they send the result to my doctor, who will look it over, nod wisely, tell me what's going on (or more likely a variant on "beats me"), and send me on my merry way.
On the bright side, I'm pretty sure I can figure out what's going on now. See, recording each time it happens has caused me to notice that the regularity of it depends on how stressful the conversation I'm in is. Typing this up while waiting for a build, it's hardly happening at all. Discussing the misunderstood requirements that require major changes by the end of the day, which is the absolute cutoff date, I got them every couple of minutes. So I'm going to go with stress on this one.
So there you go. I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. I'm not even sure there is a moral. I suppose it should be something like "Better safe than sorry", but that feels really weak. I'm pretty sure I can do better than that.
If you're paying someone, and they tell you that you have to take your pants off, make sure they are a doctor first.
There. Words to live by if I ever heard them.
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