Time for T

It’s easy to forget, but this blog is about all of the Stadlers, and not just any wee ones who may happen to be inside other, larger, cuter members of the family. As such, allow me a post about myself.

As you are only all-too-aware if you’re reading this blog, I can ramble and really prolong the resolution to any story I tell, so here’s the ending: I’m fine. Really.

But I woke up around 2am Sunday morning. I’m not sure why, but I was very aware of my heart beating.

This is not unusual for me — several years ago, I went to the hospital because my heart seemed to be racing very fast and getting faster. They ran several tests on me and came to the conclusion that, while I had experienced “mild tachycardia” (an elevated heart rate), there was nothing wrong with me, and heart palpitations (where you become aware of your own heart beating without having to take your pulse) aren’t necessarily anything to worry about, the fear of dying notwithstanding.

In fact, the only thing from that experience I did have to worry about was the bill from the ambulance ride. So that’s two things I learned: don’t freak out about heart palpitations, and don’t ever ride in an ambulance unless you really think you’re not going to survive a ride to the hospital (not that I was at all sure of that at the time — heart issues are like that). It would have been cheaper for me and several of my friends to each take a stretch SUV to the hospital! And then I would have had access to a minibar!

So when I woke up in the middle of the night a few months ago (yes, I still haven’t gotten back to the near present in this story), aware of my heart beating faster than might be expected for a body that had until recently been lying in bed and sleeping, I thought it was odd but didn’t do anything about it. True, my skin, especially on my feet, was clammy, and after some time I began to shiver as if I were quite cold (which I wasn’t), and yet it felt like palpitations again. I was convinced they would soon pass, although I ended up losing a lot of sleep that night. But nothing came of it.

So what was happening early Sunday morning seemed remarkably similar to that night a few months ago. My heart rate seemed high, though only inasmuch as I expected it to be a slow, sleeping one. Eventually, along came the clammy skin and the shivers, too. I know, it may sound scary, and it definitely was to me — all the moreso at three in the morning.

My shivering woke Julia up, and she encouraged me to call the advice nurse. This seemed like a good idea, and I was glad that line is open 24 hours. Not that the nurse had a lot to say to me after I described my symptoms. She told me to be alert for a truly high heart rate or any skipped beats, but other than that, it didn’t sound like anything to worry about.

Of course, I had my own second opinion on that matter, but it was hard to deny that there was a negative feedback loop working here. Everything seems more scary in the middle of the night — knocks on the door, phone calls, and suddenly being aware of your heart beating faster than you’d expected. This, in turn, certainly caused me to worry, which seemed to be verging on panic at times. And at 3am, there wasn’t a whole lot to calm me down.

I tried going back to sleep, but I couldn’t. Around 4am, I actually felt pretty calm, though perfectly awake, and I considered just getting up and doing some reading, just to pass the time. But I was more interested in getting some sleep, not that I was terribly successful at it. I remember being mostly awake, punctuated by short bursts of near-sleep, until about 6am, at which point I guess I finally started dozing.

On waking up at 7:30am for church, I expected to be tired, but with the night’s episode otherwise behind me. Not so. Something was still amiss, with my heart still not calmed down, and what’s more, the beat was not the steady four-four rhythm I’d come to expect as a trained drummer. It was going one, two, three, four, pause … one, two three, four, pause.

If I’d been relatively calm when I woke up, I nevertheless lost it after that. Maybe it’s that I’m blessed to have led a rather healthy life to date, but it seems to me that heart problems are an order of magnitude more frightening than the gastrointestinal yuckiness I would otherwise consider my worst illnesses in recent memory. With stomach ailments, the motif seems to be that “this, too, shall pass.” But with my heart seemingly against me, I felt peculiarly helpless.

So we changed plans and headed to the hospital. We live rather close to the hospital associated with my insurance provider, which is nice — not that it made those red lights feel any faster. Upon arriving, there was the question of whether this was, in fact, an emergency or not. I may have been freaking out bodily, but mentally, I still didn’t want to impose too much. You know, hate to be a bother. As it happened, the lady at the information desk pointed out that “urgent care” was at a different address and not open on Sundays, anyhow — causing me to wonder, momentarily, how “urgent” things could be there — so off to the emergency room it was.

Upon explaining my symptoms to the lady at the desk there, I began to feel more and more like a fake. I mean, I walked in on my own power, and was able to describe my symptoms myself (“Any shortness of breath?” “Well, I am freaking out right now, so … maybe?”) — how much of an emergency could this be? This was emphasized all the more by my being asked to sit down and wait for the plastic object they gave me to buzz. Wait, is this actually a Chili’s? Will I get seasoned fries at the end of it all?

Anyhow, soon enough, I found myself, for the second time in my life, hooked up to various monitors via sticky pads and a clip on my index finger. And as uncomfortable and unwelcoming as the whole situation was, I couldn’t help but feel reassured that, if my heart was in fact freaking out on me (and not merely freaking me out), there were few better places for it to do so.

Which, of course, is why I probably started to calm down for the first time since I’d woken up a few hours earlier. This probably helps to explain why there were no skipped beats observed by anybody at the hospital (though I am glad that Julia had confirmed them for me, so as to rule out my being a complete hypochondriac).

The staff were all amazingly nice, and I was impressed by how long the doctor who eventually saw me took to explain everything to me. Though I wasn’t sure if he was exceedingly thorough or just chatty, given that there was little chance I was going to understand everything he was saying in unabashed medical jargon.

Still, here’s what I learned from this experience: first, as I learned several years ago, your heart rate usually has to be impressively fast for it to be considered a problem. Second, I learned the name for the symptom that finally convinced me to go to the hospital: premature ventricular contractions. Sounds serious enough, doesn’t it? And yet, they so often fall into the category of “not serious and don’t require treatment”, as the discharge instructions they gave me say.

As for the clammy skin and shivering? That’s how your body reacts to excess adrenaline. It probably doesn’t seem so odd when you’re, say, running away, or taking a test. But in the middle of the night, your body still has to get rid of the stuff. My doctor pointed out that such side effects are also what meth users experience, though presumably, they enjoy it. (Memo to self: do not take up meth habit.)

I don’t know whether I’m happier or not knowing that these things that seem scary are probably nothing. Part of me wanted them to find something wrong so that they could then, in turn, fix it. With a diagnosis of “you seem fine” — my emotions notwithstanding — I’m left to contemplate the (slim) possibility that something is wrong, but they just didn’t find it. And yet, that’s what I thought several years ago, and in the intervening time I’ve hiked up some serious mountains and generally lived a medically uninteresting life.

I’ll schedule an appointment with my regular doctor, just to be sure, but there you go. Of course, being discharged with a clean bill of health didn’t make me magically less aware of my heartbeat in the succeeding days. I’m still attuned to it right now. I just have to learn to ignore it, since it’s ever so normal. But how odd is it that, merely by suspecting in the middle of the night that something seemed amiss, I could create a feedback loop that eventually made it seem something truly was?

Perhaps, then, it was good that I happened to read this Bible passage at an eminently normal breakfast, after being released from the hospital (from the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians):

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I especially liked that part about guarding my heart.