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.
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.
posted by AmyLee at 5:13 AM
1 Comments:
glad to know you will make it another day.
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