Back to the Affairs of the Heart

Well, I've been through round 2 of heart monitors and an echocardiogram and been back for the results. Here is a list of what has been found.

1. Sinus Rhythm Tachycardia - very mild and sporadic - also very common, lots of people have it and don't know that they have it unless they have other symptoms and it just happens to get picked up.

2. Premature Heart Beats - also very mild and sporadic, this is what is referred to as PVC's...makes me think of those plastic pipes.

3. Mitral Valve Regurgitation - mild (at this point), kinda scary sounding, but again lots of people have mitral valve problems especially women, but it's usually mitral valve prolapse due to the strain of pregnancy on the heart.

4. Aortic Valve Regurgitation - mild (again, at this point), this one perked my ears up considerably and I started doing some research on the topic. The aorta is the major artery that takes the blood from your heart to the rest of the body and the aortic valve is the one that keeps the blood from going back into your heart. Mine does not seal properly, and when it is supposed to push the blood away from my heart and into my body, it doesn't. This explains why I get tired so easily, I don't get enough oxygen to my body apparently.

I was told that the "Valve" issues that I have, while mild at this point are progressive and that I will need to be monitored. I will have to get an echocardiogram every year to see if it has gotten worse. I had two rounds of monitoring as I stated earlier. One was a brief 24 hour ekg machine that I thought was a total inconvenience, and then I got the event recorder. This I was supposed to wear for 30 days, but 2 weeks into it the sticky pads that you connect the leads to started irritating my skin. I pulled one of the sticky pads off and there was a blister underneath it, which I ripped the top off of. OUCH! The doctor told me to take it off and don't put it back on. The echocardiogram was performed after the 24 hour monitor and that wasn't so bad, it was pretty cool to watch my heart in action, although I kept seeing some stuff I didn't think should be happening, blue where red should be and vice versa. Of course, I went into this thinking that all of the symptoms that I was experiencing were in my head, turns out I was right, they are in my heart. So, here's what I've been thinking. If this is a progressive thing, is it going to affect all the valves of my heart eventually? Are the ones that it already affects going to worsen? For the latter question, the answer is probably. What is the fix? Valve repair/replacement surgery, eventually. As long as they are not progressing rapidly, I could live for 20 years with bad valves. Stress irritates the "condition". Why is that? I have got to find an outlet for my stress and my ANGER. ANGER being in all caps, because there's a lot of it and it's a big problem. When I become angry it is not pretty, not like middle school angry, "I don't like you anymore, you're not my friend!" I want for people to disappear. I can feel my blood pressure rise and hear my heart beat, and that is when the "flutter" in my chest happens and then it feels like my heart stops, then it starts back and beats really fast to catch up. This is what we have been trying to catch on the monitors, but it doesn't happen while I'm on the monitor. Why? Because the monitor itself is a visual reminder to everyone around me that there is something going on with my ticker. No one wants to be the reason that a person has a heart attack, now do they? Who could live with that guilt? So......basically, my heart valves are going to get worse and I'm going to suffocate from lack of oxygen without anyone elses assistance. And I thought the doctors were going to tell me nothing was wrong and I spent all that money on testing for nothing, on one hand. On the other hand.....it's not near as bad as it could have been. I don't have to have open heart surgery....not today anyway.

Memories Not Worth Remembering

A few months ago something extremely horrific happened and it was a memory that I put away somewhere in the "confines of the unknown" inside my brain. A memory I would much rather have just vanished instead of temporarily abstaining from the storage facility inside my head.

I have recently been going through some trying times with my husband, yet again. I did something that I truly regret having done and have expressed my sincere remorse for having done so.....I will admit what I did.

In a fit of anger, while being restrained, I head butted him in the mouth and busted his lip. This is a topic that keeps coming up. Have you ever heard the term "beating a dead horse?" That is what keeps happening. Every topic that he has to discuss is something that he can't get past. Finances, state of the house...me being an abusive person. I hit him, I did and there is no excuse for putting your hands on another person. I can't justify what I did and I will not attempt to do so.

Background done...back to the main topic....repressed memories.

For some reason while the husband was emotionally draining me yet again for my actions, I was able to stay amazingly calm and say: "You know people make mistakes. People "flub" up, that's just what we do. I'm not perfect, I won't even try to lie and say that I am, but don't sit there on your self righteous high horse and act like you've never done anything to me that would be completely life changing in my views of you.....and I haven't brought it up since the night that it happened."

Yes people, I actually forgot that it had happened. How can someone that has done what he tried to do to me while I was sleeping think that me hitting him one time is such an awful thing? I am faced almost daily with the thing that I did to him. People asking me what happened and why, because he called the cops on me and then someone leaked it out and EVERYONE at the sherrif's department knows him, because he used to work there, but you know, I'm sure he never had to publicly face what he did to me....you know why? I didn't call the police, I dealt with it, myself, instead of having someone else face the fight for me. God, I wish that I hadn't remembered this because now it's all that I can think of.