And the doctor saaaays....

I wrote a blog last night about feeling uneasy with the heart palpitations that I've been getting rather frequently and with increased duration.

Today I went to the doctor again to get an antibiotic refill and to address this "episodes". While listening to my heart at rest she said she noticed an extra beat every few beats. She said that she didn't hear a snap this time, but it doesn't mean that it's not there; and last time she heard the snap it was because we were putting a bit of a strain on my heart.

Because she heard the extra beats and because I have noticed things getting a little worse she wanted to run an EKG. I almost expected this and I'm super glad that she did this! After waiting about 15 minutes for her to go over the results, she came back in and told me that I had her mind a thinking, and I always kind of stump her. Of course. We then knew that the EKG showed something!

It's kind of hard for me to explain without going all medical terminology on you all (thank you collage classes and wide medical background!)... but basically every 3 or 4 beats my heart decides to do an extra beat. That extra beat then kind of 'restarts' my heart and controls it. It's a slight problem with the 'electrical system' of my heart that sends a signal that my heart needs an extra beat -- the sinus node (what controls your heart rate; your pacemaker). She explained to me that in patients my age, it's usually a "normal" abnormality and it usually doesn't cause any problems. I'm really glad that this EKG showed something because I knew that something was not right and was just afraid nothing would show up since I wasn't feeling any palpitations. But evidently it's something that's always there, whether I feel it or not. I'm just SUPER curious to see what an EKG would look like when I am having these episodes and when they last 30-45 minutes at a time.

She put me on a low dose beta-blocker for now and said that it should help these episodes that I get. The doc also said that the antibiotics that I am on for my HS have a rare side effect of making these episodes last longer. But it's just a balancing act to get everything right since the abx are actually working for me!

She did tell me that it would be a wise idea to get a heart work-up done so that we can make sure that nothing else is going on and really, exactly what IS going on on a larger scale. So when I get out to Utah and get some kind of insurance to cover me (hopefully I can get medicaid to work, at least temporarily, since I won't have a very high paying job for awhile... fingers crossed, I can't afford anything else... ugh) I will find me a good PCP, pay him/her a visit and see what they want to do about doing a heart work up.

I'm feeling a lot better about this now that I've had an easy test run to look into things further. I'm not completely in a dark. She didn't exactly know what to call it, I guess there are a couple different terms that you can use but she wasn't sure where to classify it. To me, it's a bit frustrating when I don't have an official diagnosis, but I am just going to have to be okay with what I know!

Thanks for the thoughts you guys =) I was having a lot of anxiety about it last night!