One of the things I struggle with all the time is that I still have strange symptoms once in a while. My wife and parents urge me to stop worrying, but I have to admit, these symptoms make me feel as though another afib incident is somewhere down the road for me.
As an example of what I'm talking about, just before I started writing this entry, I leaned up against the side of my chair. For some reason, when I want to lean, I tend to go to the left. And I have noticed that sometimes when I do that, I feel my heart skip a beat or two.
My doctor tells me that heart palpitations are a fact of life for many, many people. That is one reason that my wife and parents urge me to stop worrying when those things happen. But the fact of the matter is that I never had heart palpitations until about three years ago, and two years ago I started on my long cycle of hospitalizations. So whether or not they are something to worry about, they are something that I naturally worry about. I mean, they never troubled me until recently, and they almost seemed to be a harbinger of the troubles I've had recently.
In fact, this is probably one of my biggest challenges right now, because the palpitation I felt a little while ago was not an isolated incident, not even if I only take today into account. There were at least four times today when I felt that strange things were going on with my heart.
Now I know that it is possible, maybe even likely, that those four events were not threatening to my overall health. In fact, I've only been out of the hospital for three weeks. It's quite possible that those four events were simply a by-product of what I'm pretty sure was a bunch of extra stress on my heart late last month. And I'm quite certain that nothing that I felt today warrants a new trip down to New York Presbyterian Hospital.
So the only questions that leaves me with are these: Can I keep my mind off the idea that every strange heartbeat is a step closer to landing back in the hospital? Is that even the right thing to do, or is that a way of ignoring the problems? Can I both deal with my health concerns, and take care of the people in my life who desparately want me to stop worrying?
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Back to Work...Again
A quick note...due to my relative newness to using Blogger, I started a post on Saturday and then decided to re-use that post for my post of Thursday, April 28, 2011, which is the first time I've had a chance to get back to this blog. I didn't realize it would use the date that I started the draft of the post I had intended to do, rather than the date of publication. So when reading the following, keep in mind that I wrote it on the Thursday following the posted date. It doesn't make much sense otherwise. Sorry.
Tomorrow is the last day of the first week of work since I had my sternotomy. I admit that I was really nervous about it on Sunday, but it was actually easier than I thought.
Of course, since my job mainly consists of sitting and typing on a computer, it is not a true test of my capability to re-enter the mainstream of life. Especially since I am working from home.
However, it is all baby steps, I guess. My main concern based on my endurance last week was that I would need to take a nap in the morning, and another one in the afternoon. I guess it did start out like that. But on Tuesday, I only needed an afternoon nap, and yesterday I think I worked through until about 4:30 and then logged off.
For those who are curious, I do not work the whole day in my pajamas. I have actually used my lunch time each day to shower and grab a quick bite to eat. Lunch is much easier to do when your kitchen is only meters away from your workplace.
So for today at least, I am pretty satisfied. I've gone through all my e-mail at work - approximately 1,500 messages. I'm sure most of you who work at major corporations can appreciate this figure. I'm getting a feel for where my projects are, and where my prioroties are. In short, I feel like I'm back. It's not a job I always love, but it seems like normal life, and it makes me happy to be doing it again.
Of course, in the back of my mind is the ominous fact that during 2011, I've gone back to work like this three times before, and only lasted a week or two before I was bounced back to the hospital. But that note is pretty dim in my head right now - I'm still working from home for one thing, and that makes it a bit easier. Besides, I think that having done it three times before, I can handle that if it happens again.
Oh, and one more thing. I have to have hope that the hospital merry-go-round will stop, or at least slow for a while. I don't think the doctors would put me through the pain of the procedures they have unless they were also hopeful, so I'll just cling to that and be happy that I am again a part of a place where I can feel productive and, well, normal.
Tomorrow is the last day of the first week of work since I had my sternotomy. I admit that I was really nervous about it on Sunday, but it was actually easier than I thought.
Of course, since my job mainly consists of sitting and typing on a computer, it is not a true test of my capability to re-enter the mainstream of life. Especially since I am working from home.
However, it is all baby steps, I guess. My main concern based on my endurance last week was that I would need to take a nap in the morning, and another one in the afternoon. I guess it did start out like that. But on Tuesday, I only needed an afternoon nap, and yesterday I think I worked through until about 4:30 and then logged off.
For those who are curious, I do not work the whole day in my pajamas. I have actually used my lunch time each day to shower and grab a quick bite to eat. Lunch is much easier to do when your kitchen is only meters away from your workplace.
So for today at least, I am pretty satisfied. I've gone through all my e-mail at work - approximately 1,500 messages. I'm sure most of you who work at major corporations can appreciate this figure. I'm getting a feel for where my projects are, and where my prioroties are. In short, I feel like I'm back. It's not a job I always love, but it seems like normal life, and it makes me happy to be doing it again.
Of course, in the back of my mind is the ominous fact that during 2011, I've gone back to work like this three times before, and only lasted a week or two before I was bounced back to the hospital. But that note is pretty dim in my head right now - I'm still working from home for one thing, and that makes it a bit easier. Besides, I think that having done it three times before, I can handle that if it happens again.
Oh, and one more thing. I have to have hope that the hospital merry-go-round will stop, or at least slow for a while. I don't think the doctors would put me through the pain of the procedures they have unless they were also hopeful, so I'll just cling to that and be happy that I am again a part of a place where I can feel productive and, well, normal.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Why a Blog?
I hate starting by reciting my biography, but in this instance it is a bit necessary, because the topic of this blog is the life I've led and the life I'm leading as a Congenital Heart Patient. And in order to understand where I find myself now, I guess it is important to know at least the essentials of where I've been before. So here goes.
I was born in 1970, and my parents were almost immediately told that there was a problem. I mean, they could see that there was a problem, as I was born almost two months early and reportedly could be held in one of my uncle's hands. But the internal problem was the most worrisome - I had been born with almost no separation between the two ventricles of my heart. Maybe someday I'll figure out what that means, and post about it, but for my childhood, it just meant a lot of visits to a pediatric cardiologist in New York City, a standing order that I should sit down in gym class if I got out of breath, and a few surgeries and procedures, when I was two, nine, and seventeen.
Since I turned thirty eight several years ago, I have had to restart those visits to the cardiologist with some unexplained discomfort in my chest. And about a month before I turned forty, my heart decided that it wanted to do something called atrial fibrillation. According to my doctor, the heart procedure I had when I was seventeen often results in atrial fibrillation about the time the patient turns forty, a fact that they didn't know when I first had my surgery (called a Classic Fontan Procedure) so many years ago.
I've had a few recurrences of the atrial fibrillation (a-fib), and finally had a procedure called an ablation, which has helped out for the time being, but right after the ablation I had some funky heartbeats (a.k.a. slow heartbeats), so I went right back to the hospital and had a pacemaker put in. The other bummer was that because of my heart condition, the safest way to put the pacemaker in was to lay it on top of my heart, a procedure which required them to open my chest. Blech.
So now I'm recovering from that procedure, which takes some time, and wondering what is going to happen next. And that is not just paranoia, I've been in the hospital four times in the past three months. My cardiologist, who is regarded as one of the best Adult Congenital Cardiologists in the business, tells me that patients who have had the classic Fontan often have recurrent trouble with a-fib, so we've all got our fingers crossed, but may have to deal with more a-fib at some point.
I won't lie, some days are better than others. And that's what this blog is all about, the good and the bad. While I've been bouncing in and out of hospitals, I've often wondered how my fellow Adult Congenital Heart Defect (ACHD) patients deal with similar circumstances. I'm sure there are others dealing with similar health concerns, and I thought maybe if I started writing, it might eventually help us all.
I was born in 1970, and my parents were almost immediately told that there was a problem. I mean, they could see that there was a problem, as I was born almost two months early and reportedly could be held in one of my uncle's hands. But the internal problem was the most worrisome - I had been born with almost no separation between the two ventricles of my heart. Maybe someday I'll figure out what that means, and post about it, but for my childhood, it just meant a lot of visits to a pediatric cardiologist in New York City, a standing order that I should sit down in gym class if I got out of breath, and a few surgeries and procedures, when I was two, nine, and seventeen.
Since I turned thirty eight several years ago, I have had to restart those visits to the cardiologist with some unexplained discomfort in my chest. And about a month before I turned forty, my heart decided that it wanted to do something called atrial fibrillation. According to my doctor, the heart procedure I had when I was seventeen often results in atrial fibrillation about the time the patient turns forty, a fact that they didn't know when I first had my surgery (called a Classic Fontan Procedure) so many years ago.
I've had a few recurrences of the atrial fibrillation (a-fib), and finally had a procedure called an ablation, which has helped out for the time being, but right after the ablation I had some funky heartbeats (a.k.a. slow heartbeats), so I went right back to the hospital and had a pacemaker put in. The other bummer was that because of my heart condition, the safest way to put the pacemaker in was to lay it on top of my heart, a procedure which required them to open my chest. Blech.
So now I'm recovering from that procedure, which takes some time, and wondering what is going to happen next. And that is not just paranoia, I've been in the hospital four times in the past three months. My cardiologist, who is regarded as one of the best Adult Congenital Cardiologists in the business, tells me that patients who have had the classic Fontan often have recurrent trouble with a-fib, so we've all got our fingers crossed, but may have to deal with more a-fib at some point.
I won't lie, some days are better than others. And that's what this blog is all about, the good and the bad. While I've been bouncing in and out of hospitals, I've often wondered how my fellow Adult Congenital Heart Defect (ACHD) patients deal with similar circumstances. I'm sure there are others dealing with similar health concerns, and I thought maybe if I started writing, it might eventually help us all.
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