cyberbox2
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2005
I can't even begin to tell you all how excite I was at the thought of Finding Pete at Universal and winning a Podcast cruise for my family. I have gathered all kinds of data, outlined my plan of attach and completely debriefed the wife and kids on just what and who this mission was about.
And then I passed out.....
It all started about a week ago, when I was down in Florida looking for employment. I started feeling heart palpitations or PVC's as they are medically known. I'd felt them in the past for a minute or two, months and months apart but this time it was constant and wouldn't go away. More of an annoyance than anything but it weighed heavy on my mind the whole week.
Let me give you some background. I'm a 31 year old very healthy very athletic man that runs 3 miles a day 5 days a week and lifts weights every other day. I don't smoke or drink and I only occasionally have a caffeinated drink. I do all of this not only for my own health but to avoid the darker side of life and perhaps my own mortality and I have helped and motivated many people along the way.
So..... I arrive home from Florida early this past Saturday morning without a problem, but the PVC's continued
Every day my worry gets worse and I tell myself that Monday I'm going to a cardiologist, sadly that's wasn't soon enough.
About 4:45am Monday morning I wake up to use the restroom. I lay back down afterwords and I start feeling my heart again and I really start to worry (panic) I suddenly break out in a cold sweat, get back up head to the bathroom again to splash water on my face and try to calm down but it wasn't working. I got half way back to the bed from the bathroom and hit the floor knocking some stuff over. My wife jumps out of bed yelling my name, both of my children run in my room and start crying, as I try to re-gain my composure. My wife dials 911 and with in minutes the paramedics are at the door.
Now being as fit as I am and never having passed out before I didn't know if I was having a heart attach or dying or what! but by the time the EMT's walked in the house I had managed to dress myself and go downstairs to let them in. They asked me several questions and checked my vitals. Everything was normal but at this point I was so scared I had my wife drive me to the emergency room. We got there and all checked in and by this time it's about 5:30am
They take blood, hook me up to a monitor, run an I.V. and paged the cardiologist. I sat in the emergency room with my freaked out wife and kids for two hours until the heart doc came in. He had me explain what had happened. He then told me that all of my blood work came back normal but that he would like to admit me into the hospital so that he could order more tests, mainly an echo cardiogram.
Thankfully I get a private room on the third floor, with a view too! AT 7:00pm that evening the tech finally shows up and runs the Echo cardiogram. When he's finished, he tells me that he sees a rather big heart murmur. Of course I start freaking out
so the rest of Monday night was very tense for me. By 11:00pm I just could not close my eyes and sleep so I asked the nurse on duty what she could give and exactly why I was so scared. She did a great job of easing my mind by telling me that the tech shouldn't have said a word to me about anything he saw because he is only trained to take the test and not to decipher it and further more if I had such a big murmur she said then she would be able to hear it, and no matter how hard she listened, she could hear no murmur.
That helped me calm down a little, and I was a little less convinced that I would need immediate open heart surgery
So all day today I sit in my hospital room surrounded by friends and family waiting for the cardiologist to review the echo cardiogram and come tell me his diagnosis. I passed the halls from the time I woke up at 8:30 until he showed up at 3:30pm!
So with a full room of eager ears the doctor tells me that I have 'Aortic Regurgitation' which basically means that one of the valves in my heart is just slightly deformed and doesn't close tightly enough when the heart pumps blood out of the aortic chamber and as a result some residual blood leaks back into that particular chamber of my heart. Sounds bad huh? He says that it is congenital and not something that I developed, I was just born that way.
Thankfully my case is mild and most likely I will not need a valve replacement unless it worsens. The doc said that because of my great health, that if I didn't have the heart palpitations that brought me into the E.R., they might not have ever known it was their until until it was to late.
By the way the PVC's (palpitations) are harmless and not really related to the Aortic Regurgitation but may have been more consistent because if it. He gave me a prescription to ease the PVC's and set up another echo cardiogram for six months from now to see if anything has changed.
If you can imagine how devastating this is for me at 31 years of age and very health conscious to have to face this reality knowing that no matter what I do, I can't fix this on my own.
I'm back at home now in my room where it all started to days ago and the memories are strong and I really don't even want to be here. My poor devastated 10 year old daughter broke down the minute she saw me tonight and said that she doesn't want to come home (she's spending the night at a friends house tonight) because she doesn't want to see where it all happened and that she's afraid to leave me because she doesn't know if I'll die or not
I, no doubt have some mental battles to fight in the coming weeks. I obviously won't be moving to Florida anytime soon (but one day I promise)
and to top it all off I will not be taking the family to Universal this weekend.
I'm just to scared to go that far from home right now and that really bothers me.
So I hand the hunt over to all you other Dis'ers and I wish you all the best.
I look forward to hearing who won the cruise on next weeks show
(boy this really helped to write down, now maybe I can get some sleep)
And then I passed out.....
It all started about a week ago, when I was down in Florida looking for employment. I started feeling heart palpitations or PVC's as they are medically known. I'd felt them in the past for a minute or two, months and months apart but this time it was constant and wouldn't go away. More of an annoyance than anything but it weighed heavy on my mind the whole week.
Let me give you some background. I'm a 31 year old very healthy very athletic man that runs 3 miles a day 5 days a week and lifts weights every other day. I don't smoke or drink and I only occasionally have a caffeinated drink. I do all of this not only for my own health but to avoid the darker side of life and perhaps my own mortality and I have helped and motivated many people along the way.
So..... I arrive home from Florida early this past Saturday morning without a problem, but the PVC's continued
Every day my worry gets worse and I tell myself that Monday I'm going to a cardiologist, sadly that's wasn't soon enough.
About 4:45am Monday morning I wake up to use the restroom. I lay back down afterwords and I start feeling my heart again and I really start to worry (panic) I suddenly break out in a cold sweat, get back up head to the bathroom again to splash water on my face and try to calm down but it wasn't working. I got half way back to the bed from the bathroom and hit the floor knocking some stuff over. My wife jumps out of bed yelling my name, both of my children run in my room and start crying, as I try to re-gain my composure. My wife dials 911 and with in minutes the paramedics are at the door.
Now being as fit as I am and never having passed out before I didn't know if I was having a heart attach or dying or what! but by the time the EMT's walked in the house I had managed to dress myself and go downstairs to let them in. They asked me several questions and checked my vitals. Everything was normal but at this point I was so scared I had my wife drive me to the emergency room. We got there and all checked in and by this time it's about 5:30am
They take blood, hook me up to a monitor, run an I.V. and paged the cardiologist. I sat in the emergency room with my freaked out wife and kids for two hours until the heart doc came in. He had me explain what had happened. He then told me that all of my blood work came back normal but that he would like to admit me into the hospital so that he could order more tests, mainly an echo cardiogram.
Thankfully I get a private room on the third floor, with a view too! AT 7:00pm that evening the tech finally shows up and runs the Echo cardiogram. When he's finished, he tells me that he sees a rather big heart murmur. Of course I start freaking out
so the rest of Monday night was very tense for me. By 11:00pm I just could not close my eyes and sleep so I asked the nurse on duty what she could give and exactly why I was so scared. She did a great job of easing my mind by telling me that the tech shouldn't have said a word to me about anything he saw because he is only trained to take the test and not to decipher it and further more if I had such a big murmur she said then she would be able to hear it, and no matter how hard she listened, she could hear no murmur. That helped me calm down a little, and I was a little less convinced that I would need immediate open heart surgery
So all day today I sit in my hospital room surrounded by friends and family waiting for the cardiologist to review the echo cardiogram and come tell me his diagnosis. I passed the halls from the time I woke up at 8:30 until he showed up at 3:30pm!
So with a full room of eager ears the doctor tells me that I have 'Aortic Regurgitation' which basically means that one of the valves in my heart is just slightly deformed and doesn't close tightly enough when the heart pumps blood out of the aortic chamber and as a result some residual blood leaks back into that particular chamber of my heart. Sounds bad huh? He says that it is congenital and not something that I developed, I was just born that way.
Thankfully my case is mild and most likely I will not need a valve replacement unless it worsens. The doc said that because of my great health, that if I didn't have the heart palpitations that brought me into the E.R., they might not have ever known it was their until until it was to late.
By the way the PVC's (palpitations) are harmless and not really related to the Aortic Regurgitation but may have been more consistent because if it. He gave me a prescription to ease the PVC's and set up another echo cardiogram for six months from now to see if anything has changed.
If you can imagine how devastating this is for me at 31 years of age and very health conscious to have to face this reality knowing that no matter what I do, I can't fix this on my own.
I'm back at home now in my room where it all started to days ago and the memories are strong and I really don't even want to be here. My poor devastated 10 year old daughter broke down the minute she saw me tonight and said that she doesn't want to come home (she's spending the night at a friends house tonight) because she doesn't want to see where it all happened and that she's afraid to leave me because she doesn't know if I'll die or not
I, no doubt have some mental battles to fight in the coming weeks. I obviously won't be moving to Florida anytime soon (but one day I promise)
and to top it all off I will not be taking the family to Universal this weekend.
I'm just to scared to go that far from home right now and that really bothers me.
So I hand the hunt over to all you other Dis'ers and I wish you all the best.
I look forward to hearing who won the cruise on next weeks show
(boy this really helped to write down, now maybe I can get some sleep)
I'm so sorry to hear about your illness and your daughter's reaction. I hope that you fully recover quickly and get your Florida dream job/home in the near future.
Cyberbox2! I was hoping you would find Pete for us! If I only lived closer I would be down there. If my car didn't need work on it I would be in the car now driving. But I am to afraid to drive it to far right now....(gee that sounds bad - I could pay for it if I wasn't saving for the cruise! 
) 
