Here's how the story goes...
Monday night I was in bed feeling pretty exhausted and after about an hour of sleeping I wake up. My cat is still outdoors so I get up to see if he'll come in. I go to the apt door and here he comes. While I'm waiting on him I get lightheaded. By the time I get back into bed I'm dragging my feet and breathing really hard. My roommate saw my condition too and said I looked pretty bad.
But on Tuesday morning I wake up feeling fine. After work I go home and later that evening the exhaustion hits again and I can feel my heart racing big time. It didn't go away on Wednesday morning as while I'm at work I feel the exhaustion, the heavy breathing is kicking in every so often and my heart feels like it racing a marathon. I leave at around 10 am and within a couple of hours I end up in an Urgent Care facility. I get diagnosed with some heart problem called Atrial (that word isn't accurate, it's the closest I can remember it) Fibulation. They call A-Fib for short.
A-Fib is where the four chambers of the heart of out of sinc with each other. In particular the top two chambers are beating really fast and irregularly to fill up with blood. they bottom two chambers are normal to spread the blood the rest of the body. They call an ambulance because they don't have the means to treat something this serious. While in the ambulance the EMT puts a needle in me (which later leaves a bruise). I get to the hospital and another needle is stuck in me for the same purpose as the first one. When the second of the needles is put in me guess who's putting it in? A college student.
I don't mind that part but he couldn't find the vein and there is pain involved. The lady overlooking him takes over and after some more pain finds the vein and tapes the needle and tubing into place. Excellent- good to go. She takes several tubes worth of blood.
Later on I'm getting hungry as I hadn't eaten since 9 am, it's approaching some later hour I can't remember and my stomach is begging for food. I ask for some and the nurse orders a tray. It's not for about an hour or two before the nurse comes in, asks if I got my food yet (no), leaves and discovers someone brought it up but left it on the counter out in the hallway. DOH!
If you've ever been in the hospital as something other than a visitor you may realize sleeping is a little difficult. I log in maybe 5 hours in which during that time a nurse has two question sessions, a blood sample session, an EKG, and test for blood circulation. Oh yeah, and a roommate gets moved in at 5:30 am waking me up (no, I'm not mad). I can tell I'm getting a headache and my neck is starting to feel some pain too. Before breakfast is served at 8 am I have enjoyed the happy pursuit of emptying my stomach because I have to suffer a migraine for the lack of sleep.
My appetite is regained at noon after dozing off several times, etc, etc. Anyways, my whole Thursday is basically spent with more blood being drawn, another EKG, one or two more pulse checkings, and waiting for the cardivascular doctor. I shows up at time in the later afternoon and we talk. He leaves after we establish we can do lab tests as an out patient. And so by 5 pm I am dismissed from the hospital to be picked up by some friends.
The yellow paper I receive with two smaller white papers basically sums up all of my experiences into one solution to fix my heart problem- Special Diet: low fat/ low cholesterol. No medications thankfully. Yes-sir-ee, I get to change my diet to not only low fat & low cholestrol, but one of the white sheets of paper said I was suffering from A-Fib hyperglycemic. That I believe is a diabetes where I have too much sugar. So, if I lower my sugar intake I also lower my cholesterol.
Wow, what a life...
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