I don't Blog nearly as often as I want to, and these last few months have been full of craziness. Not gonna touch on COVID or Politics. 7 weeks ago we became grandparents. Little Miley Elizabeth Clemetson joined Laura and Ryan's family and is the sweetest, cutest baby ever born. Joshua and Hannah got engaged and plan a small family wedding in December with a bigger celebration to follow next summer. Joshua was laid off and he moved back home, (sounds like he will be called back in the fall) my work hours were drastically reduced, John's job went through several changes. We are recovering from all of this, John's job is getting back to normal, my hours are still reduced but increasing. Even today, Laura and Ryan are dealing with massive flooding due to heavy rainfalls along the river that goes through their land.
After the episode I blogged about last time, I was sent to an Electrophyisiology Cardiologist. He determined that the rapid heart rate episodes I had been experiencing was caused by an extra electrical path in my heart that was causing an extra heartbeat and my heart wouldn't get out of the rhythm on it's own.
Today I went to the hospital to get it fixed. The experience was actually quite awful. I had been told that I would be under a conscious sedation and that I would be sleepy and groggy and not really with it. I think they forgot that part. I heard them say they gave me medication, but didn't feel any different after than I did before, so I would say I was wide awake and not groggy at all. After being hooked up to about 29 wires with patches all over my body they got the rest of me prepped and ready to go. There was a whole lot of equipment around me that looked like it cost a lot of money. They inserted wires etc into 4 veins, two one each side and one into my femoral artery. I could feel the wires moving inside my body. Really strange. They gave me some kind of drug to produce a rapid heart rate, it worked, I asked what it was and they said 170ish. I am not sure what all they were doing, but I could feel and hear my heart rate very fast, then it seemed like they were doing things to change that. I had really strange and awful sensations. The feeling of chocking was really uncomfortable. Once they had the info they needed, they started the ablation. The wires that they had already in place were manipulated into place and to fix the problem, they zapped the spot in the heart. If you think about how it might feel to touch your heart to an electric fence, that's what it felt like. It was painful. They did it twice to two different spots. Then to check if it worked, they gave me the drug again to try induce a rapid heart beat. The drug was quite aggressive and made my arms start shaking, soon my whole torso was shaking, like I was having a seizure. I asked if this was supposed to be happening and the nurse that was with me said yes. During this time, due to me being on my back for so long, I had a major muscle spasm in my lower back, bad enough to make me cry out, the nurse gave me some kind of pain meds. That too ended and soon everything was pulled out and I was wheeled back to my room to lay on the bed on my back for 4 more hours to make sure I wouldn't bleed from the femoral artery stuff. My back spazed out again and few more times, but I made it through.
I'm home now. I'm still kind of feeling sorry for myself for the experience, it was much worse than I thought it was going to be. I'm still feeling really stiff and sore, mostly due to being on my back for so long. I'm super glad I didn't know what was ahead for me. I am very thankful that they we able to fix the problem, and honestly, compared to what so many others have to go though with medical issues, it really wasn't that bad.
Every day is a gift from God. I am so thankful for all of you who lifted me up in prayer, God is the ultimate healer. For all the craziness on the last few months, there is so much more positive than negative. I love you all!
