In a world that keeps on pushin me around
I won't back down
I wanted to take a moment and solicit some good thoughts, prayers and positive vibrations for my friend, and frequent commenter here, P.
P. and I used to work together at my old law firm in the Dam. We've both since moved on to other things, but we have remained in close contact.
She has a scary heart thing going on this Thursday or Friday.
She noticed she had an irregular, galloping heartbeat some time ago, and she generally just dealt with it.
Last week, she mentioned it to an attentive physician's assistant by the name of Brendan (with whom I used to play volleyball, as an aside)...
Apparently, it was serious enough to merit rushing into the university hospital, cut to the front of the line situation. From what I understand, they don't know exactly what is causing this, but it is serious.
So Thursday (or Friday), they are going to snake this camera up her femoral artery, from her thigh and up into her (huge) heart and try to either shock it, or kill off the part of her heart that is causing this irregular electric impulse.
(P.- I am sorry if I fucked up the details of this, but, as you know, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV.)
So, anyway, P. is a sweetheart and very good friend of mine, so please send her some prayers, or good thoughts, or, if you are a dirty naked hippie, maybe see if you can throw a drum circle together.
P., I love you and I hope everything goes alright this week.
P. and I used to work together at my old law firm in the Dam. We've both since moved on to other things, but we have remained in close contact.
She has a scary heart thing going on this Thursday or Friday.
She noticed she had an irregular, galloping heartbeat some time ago, and she generally just dealt with it.
Last week, she mentioned it to an attentive physician's assistant by the name of Brendan (with whom I used to play volleyball, as an aside)...
Apparently, it was serious enough to merit rushing into the university hospital, cut to the front of the line situation. From what I understand, they don't know exactly what is causing this, but it is serious.
So Thursday (or Friday), they are going to snake this camera up her femoral artery, from her thigh and up into her (huge) heart and try to either shock it, or kill off the part of her heart that is causing this irregular electric impulse.
(P.- I am sorry if I fucked up the details of this, but, as you know, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV.)
So, anyway, P. is a sweetheart and very good friend of mine, so please send her some prayers, or good thoughts, or, if you are a dirty naked hippie, maybe see if you can throw a drum circle together.
P., I love you and I hope everything goes alright this week.
Labels: PPH
posted by Joe at
9:51 PM
6 Comments:
Will be thinking of her, hope it all goes well.
Ooh, a dirty naked hippie drum circle…bring it!
Hey, thanks Joe and others for your supportive thoughts and kind words. Let me just say that the arrhythmia is non-life threatening…I’ve had it for 30 years, after all. It’s just that now they can fix it, they have the technology (cue the Bionic Man music). The serious (-ly freaky, to me) part is the thought of messing with my circuit board with a live electrode. But I’m told they do this routinely, so I am encouraged. That, and I’ll hopefully have some good drugs while they’re under the hood, tinkering with the wiring.
Muchas gracias, again. Post some pretty pictures and good music in the meantime, k?
I know a few people who have had this precedure done. They all ended up healthier and happier. - And not just from the great drug cocktail! I may not know you all, but my thoughts are with you P.
It sounds like she might have Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, too many electrical signals in the heart. I lived with arrhythmia and palpitations the first 25 years of my life until I had laser ablation surgery and they cauterized all the extra electricity. Although I was anesthetized, I remember the laser. It felt like swallowing food that is too hot, but a hundred times worse. On the plus side, I was out of the hospital the same day. It's a minimally invasive procedure.
Everything turn out ok?
Thanks for asking...I just got home and I'm fine. Here (sorry about the length) I'll cut/paste the email I just sent to the Dude et al:
I'm back from the heart procedure. They didn't keep me overnight. I didn't get much of a buzz from the drugs either, darn it. In fact, I was fairly lucent for much of the time I was in the electrophysiology lab...except for those couple of hours of missing time, when I must have either gone to la-la land or got abducted by aliens.
Long story short, they could not do an ablation procedure on me. After monitoring my heart and giving it some drugs to do some acrobatics for them (I needed a double shot, actually...I blame the daily treadmill) it finally kicked into overdrive, but the episodes were short-lived. When he finally did determine where the redundant electrical signals were coming from, they turned out to be located in very close proximity to a part of my heart that is quite important, thank you very much. So rather than monkey around and try to ablate that area and run the risk of frying the good wiring with the bad (which then would have necessitated a permanent pacemaker), he rightfully elected to do nothing. And I am glad.
He did give me a prescription for a beta blocker that I can take if I want, but fuck that...By the time I pop a beta blocker, my arrhythmia would be done with. But I'll get the prescription filled anyway just in case I anticipate a situation where my heart would be tripping. Like hiking the Appalachian Trail, or just planting a few flats of flowers next spring on a hot day. Or in case there's a presidential speech in my future.
Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. I felt very loved and supported this past week and I appreciate that so much. It really helped to put my mind at ease.
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