I Speak Because I Know
This was me a month and a half ago. Wearing a 24 hour heart monitor because my resting heart rate was fluctuating between 114 and 120 bpm.
When you tell the doctor you’ve had heart palpitations for over 10 years, you get a look that makes you want to explain that you aren’t complacent your life is just really complicated.
Over the past decade I would go to the ER I had dizziness or shortness of breath, get and EKG and be sent home with a cardiologist name that I would never follow up with.
Family members fighting cancer, an unexpected pregnancy, then an infant, teenagers with teenage drama, deaths in the family, all happening simultaneously really doesn’t lend itself to focusing on your own health.
Until I woke up feeling like my heart was beating out of chest. Apple watch clocked me at 120bpm at 7am. I had kids to drop off at school and errands to run. So went to urgent care when I could fit it in hoping to get a quick EKG. What I got instead was reprimanded was told to go straight to the hospital.
Long story short. My heart beats, pumps, and looks fine. One month, an echocardiogram, an ultrasound, a sleep study and one methocolate challenge later and I find I have sleep apnea, and asthma, and have developed a sensitivity to caffeine. So far treating the above has found me improved at my last follow up.
Three things kept me ignoring the tightness in my chest and heart palpatations.
Being overwhelmed with other things.
Thinking it was because I was getting older and am a little heavier. I worked out more instead saying I was having a problem out loud. I really didn’t want to even tell my husband, it seemed admission of a failure.
Having Fibromyalgia I have some pain and related symptoms most days. I assumed some of the pain was related to that, which meant there was no point in spending the time on checking it to just find out nothing can really be done.
We live for them, let’s make sure we continue living for them.
Moral of my story… Don’t survive all life has to throw at you only to be taken down by a health issue that you could’ve taken care of if you had got it checked out. Dying from uncontrolled asthma is not how I’m going out!
Take my advice and schedule appointments to have any concerns, even small ones, addressed with your doctor. It seems like the easiest thing to neglect on your to do list since it’s for you, but don’t do it. Treat yourself like a friend you love, and make sure you are taking care of your health!