The Heartbeat Hurdle

How I ended up at the Cape Town Carnival and not climbing in the Tradathon at Wolfberg..

Some truths are universal. Some are inevitable. Some are painful. They all just are.

Life is full of surprises. Sure it is a cliché. It is also true. To the point of redundancy. Show me a real fortune teller and there is a person with no surprises. We are all on a journey into focus, one second at a time. What will you find? How will you take it?

Beauty is often in the small. Happiness in the detail. Satisfaction in the nuance. The giggles and tickles. A kind word, a smile, sun kisses and the smell after rain. A hug when you need it. The pleasant surprises we relish, without really calling them such. We just enjoy. 

Despair is often in the large, the shocking and the consequential. If you let it in. The seemingly unfair. The blindside. The “why me” and “this sucks”. These are also just surprises, but our reaction can cripple us, if we wallow.  

It was Monday. I had no idea what would happen, as always. 

Beach and cool new friends. Bar and beer, a dance floor of swirling arms and flashing teeth. Dawn approaching, I was tired. Time to cover my pupils, recharge, relive the night in REM. 

But the cage was rattling, my heart was more than racing. Rampant. No Rest. This. Is. Weird. W.T.F.?

I went to work blurry, left even more so. Tried to sleep again. 

Impossible. The thrashing inside visible between my ribs. Some.thing. is. Not. rig.ht. 

I cycled to the doctor. She was puzzled. I was both alive and able to ride a bike. “You better contact some people”. Ambulances are cramped places. Big needles and clear fluids. 176 bpm: and not the music from last night. Drugs in. No change. “That’s interesting”. More drugs. Still 176. “You better drive faster”. 

For the medically inclined: Atrioventricular Nodal Reentrant Tachycardia. Essentially a neural short circuit sends the ticker into overdrive. It isn't rare, but normally it stops after a while, or with physical techniques/drugs. Sometimes, however, it gets locked in and can potentially continue until the suitably unambiguous 'cardiac death'. 

The Resuscitation Room: lots of people, worried faces. “12 hours like this, seriously?” Electrodes everywhere. Oxygen. The paper tongue of the ECG machine telling my story. Cardioversion. The last trick.    

“Is it like jump starting a car?”

“A bit more complicated”.          

Another chemical cocktail: The Michael Jackson. Drowsy. Out.

^-^-^-^-^ ZAP! .. ^---^---^---^

92 bpm has never felt so slow, and frikken awesome! 

A long night in ICU. Observation on their part. Contemplation on mine. 

52 bpm. The bliss of normality.    

So what next: Visits to specialists. Money. Probably an operation. More expense. No alcohol, no caffeine, minimal exercise. Don’t leave the city. Hence the photo of the dancing jelly fish first up. 

     

My being is intertwined with an active lifestyle. So I could wrestle with the perceived kakness of this series of surprises. I could bitch and whine. I could drown in melancholy. But I won’t.

If this were 100 years ago, I would have only had to wait and see what failed first.   

Last Tuesday could also have ended far worse: evidently I am both a hardy and lucky critter. 

Technology has the potential to restore health. 

Family, friends and even strangers care.

This is just a hurdle, and I have people to help me.

I have a lot to be happy about.

The beat goes on.    

Well wishes from up North. You guys rock!

Big thanks to the ambulance crew, everyone at Kingsbury Hospital ER, family and friends.