new best friend

About a month ago I visited the cardiologist to try and get some answers about the heart palpitations I had been having. They did another EKG--saw nothing in 10 seconds--and the doctor said that because I was young, at a healthy weight, and my blood tests looked good, that he didn't think it was anything to worry about. In fact, it might be completely normal and as simple as heartburn. He advised me to stop drinking caffeine, carbonation, and alcohol--all things that I don't put into my body. He wouldn't even look at me while he was talking. I wasn't very happy because 1) it isn't normal for me and 2) it's NOT heartburn, and I'm pretty sure it's not garbage going into my body. I'm not very good at being assertive, especially when I'm talking to someone clearly more knowledgeable than I--which is kind of dumb, because I have the ultimate knowledge about my body and when something feels wrong. I tried to explain that I wasn't worried about individual heart flutters, but the fact that my heart would flutter every 5-6 seconds for hours. He decided to have me use a 24 holter monitor to see if they could catch whatever was happening.

Of course, not much happened that 24 hours. Two weeks later they called me with the results: I am having premature ventricular contractions (PVC's). Basically, my heart is adding a beat in, and then skipping to make up for it. The doctor then decided to put me on a 30 day heart monitor so that they could see what an episode looked like.

So--this is what I'm hooked up to for the next 30 days. I have two electrodes on my chest that constantly monitor my heartbeat. I get to attach this awesome (and large) thing to my pants and try to hide the wires by tucking them into my clothes.

Probably the most awesome thing is the high pitched wailing sound that goes off whenever it detects an abnormality in my heart beat. And it screams at me for a looong time. The kids get nervous when it goes off, and ask when it's going to stop making that noise. Then the eCardio people call to ask me how I'm feeling and what I was doing when the alarm went off. I'm really looking forward to it going off during the middle of church, of course.

All joking aside, this test does help me to relax a little. Even though so much of what I've read says that it's probably not a big deal (I've discovered that there are a lot of people out there who are living with messed up heartbeats), it's not something I'm ready to get used to. I'm glad to know that it's not all in my head--they can see that something is going on--and hopefully they will be able to figure out why it has started and how to get things back to normal. And, I guess if I have to live with it for the rest of my life--at least I will know that it isn't going to wear my heart out.