Wednesday, beginning at 8:00 am in the morning, my heart was electrified, probed and poked until it did it’s odd, unsettling, rhythmic thing of sending out extra errant beats. Then that little wild piece of me was forever silenced, cauterized.
 |
| Image of ablation of my heart. |
They punctured me, symmetrically, and inserted catheters through my femoral vein and up into the heart of my heart and changed it. It feels odd, like I’ve lost a little piece of me.
But the thing is I’ve felt, for a long time, there may be some connection between the skittishness of my heart and the pain in my head. When I go through a phase of a lot of severe headaches or changes of medication, I experience more palpitations. Some of these result in conversion to a different rhythm plus rapid heart beat. Sometimes, after a few minutes, these episodes self correct. Sometimes they don’t. Then I have to go to ER for treatment, conversion to a regular rhythm and speed.
I’ve avoided doing anything about this scary little heart habit for years, putting up with episodes that sent me to emergency rooms from the Northwest to New Mexico. I have lived in the knowledge that I could have an episode out on the water in our boat, hiking on Chuckanut mountain or even in Mexico. I have been in the classroom at the beginning of teaching a two and a half hour class, only to have my heart begin to race.
Time to follow my instinct as well as the suggestions of the doctor and do something about it. Surviving and benefitting from the Michigan hospital experience for treatment of my migraines somehow gave me the courage to have this heart procedure. The procedure went fine and my doc is 95% sure he got it. But of course, I paid for this whole experience with 2 days of migraines capped off by a 3rd day with the mother of all migraines. Not eating nor drinking until 2 pm in the afternoon on the day of the procedure was a big contributor I’m sure. I’m feeling much better today, and I’m hopeful.
Does anyone else have PSVT – tachycardia and migraines, and if so, have you noticed any relationship?