A few more hours at Stanford Hospital

Everything is fine though.

Andrew and I were lying in bed watching a DVD last night, and I noticed my heart rate seemed pretty fast. After the DVD finished I tried to take my pulse, but it was too fast and a bit over the place, so I used the blood pressure monitor instead. My heart beat was all over the place, and it said my pulse was 160 . I did it 2 more times, and they both said 153.

So I called the cardiology doc on call, and she said just to go to the ER so they could do an EKG and check it out. It was already late, so it was midnight by the time we got to the hospital.

The EKG was all over the place, so they got me a bed. They hooked me up to everything, and it was fascinating watching my heart rate. It was bouncing all over the place - it wouldn't stay the same for more than half a second. It was bouncing between about 95 and 160, so definitely irregular!

They gave me some beta blocker drugs by IV, and that settled things down within about 5-10 minutes. They took blood and an x-ray, then we had to wait until all the blood test results came back.

Everything was fine, so I was released about 3am. I have to go see my cardiologist this week again, but I daresay they'll tell me to try taking extra oral beta blockers if it happens again, then go back to the ER if it continues.

The doctors last night were surprised that an aorta replacement could affect anything that had to with the bits that control the electrical impulses of the heart. So they looked at the surgery notes and apparently when they did my surgery, they had to detach, then "reimplant" the right coronary artery, which apparently CAN affect the electrical impulses. So I may have this happen again. Basically the heart is getting irritated by something (funnily enough, it's not too happy after heart surgery), and this is causing the whacky heartbeat.

So there you go. That was our fun night. Everything is fine though, we're just a little tired!