The Months That Followed

 Following news for my diagnosis, after my first visit to a hearth failure specialist, our next stop was back at the hospital to have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) placed. We returned to the same same-day-surgery we had been to for my ablation and, to our delight, were assigned the same nurse. Clo was the absolute best in making sure we were comfortable and felt cared for. That day, I received a single lead, ICD pacemaker and was sent home within hours to hope and pray I would never need the device.

Two weeks later, I landed back in the hospital due to chest pain. I thought it was just my gallbladder, but testing found nothing. It was then assumed it was my heart, so I had to stay over night for observation. A good dose of Toradol finally knocked that pain down and I returned home with no answeres. The only question we had answered during that incident was that we needed to find new doctors. During the entire 24 hours at the hospital, neither of my cardiologists could be contacted. A subsequent visit to the heart failure doctor confirmed he hadn't even been told about my admission despite Aaron having called his nurse to let them know. We quickly received a referral to Dr. Bunch at the University of Utah.

Our first consultation was done over the phone. He had read my chart and prescribed a few medications right away (the other doctors hadn't prescribed anything). We felt good about the change, reassured that we were in good hands.

Things continued smoothly for a few months until March 16th when I was sitting at Keelie's basketball and had a wake-up call. I happened to glance at my watch and saw that my heart rate was 152. 152? I was just sitting on a bench watching--I wasn't even emotional or excited about the game. And I didn't feel anything either. I discretely got up from the bench and found my way to the restroom to do an ecg on my watch. I recognized the tracing right away as VT. I was jarred, scared, and confused. How and why was this happening? Once I got home, I sent a pdf of the tracing to Dr. Bunch's office. The PA called me back and told me to increase my anti-arrhythmia medication (flecainide), and asked me to send a transmission from my ICD.

Normally, the ICD will record VT and send a transmission to your doctor's office with that information. I sent the transmission but the PA told me she didn't see anything from my ICD. While I was relieved I hadn't received a shock that day, I was very confused as I knew I'd had several minutes of VT--and that's not good. So they asked me to wear a heart monitor--for 30 days. 

I wore the monitor until the middle of April, anxious to hear the results. But before the doctor could discuss the findings with me, my heart decided to take things up a notch. On April 29th, after seven days of on and off VT capped by an episode of VT at 140-160 bpm lasting a few hours, Aaron took me to the ER for a cardioversion. What we thought would be a pretty quick trip to the emergency room turned into a 12 day stay in the hospital, most of that time spent in the ICU.

If you're new here, start with this post and follow along in chronological order.