I've got a lot of Nerve!

Soo...here we go. I take my first step into the world of blogging, I wonder if I will be thoughtful, insightful or just plain silly? Hmm..it should be interesting.

I do need to thank Michi for helping me to, finally, name this blog. She's a genius and all credits for the name go to her...oh...and a bit to my doctor. Which was the catalyst for me to start this blog. To have one place to post about what is going on and to keep people up to date on what is happening health-wise. Well...I guess there is nothing for it but to start.....eeks!

As some of you know, and some do not, I have been having health issues for the past year. It started out with a bad cold, but soon I was passing out without knowing why and my health in general was just ...down. Some days it was hard to move without passing out and plagued with headaches that did not cease and where the strength of a migraine all the time with head explosions some days. The bathroom has never been so far away as those days!! I lived in a very very small town at the time, Vilas for ya'll trying to remember the name, and was seeing a doctor at the clinic in the town next to us. A series of tests were run, which if you know me...I took like a baby. I didn't quite kick and scream, but it was close. Needles are not my friend, though the women who did the blood draws were as sweet as can be and I only had to be restuck once. Yay! As part of all these tests my doctor at the time decided to send me to a pulmonologist to have my asthma checked, just in case. I went into the the small town hospital to have a lung function test, easy as pie test you breathe into this machine as hard as you can. No needles! I was stoked and the technicians promised me no needles. Let me tell you something people, the technician LIED! Horribly so too. As part of this test they give you albuterol so that everyone uses the same drug so all the results are the same. I don't know about everyone else, but that drug makes my heart race, really badly too. I warned the technician that I react this way, but was given the drug anyways. Alright, the evil drug is administered, I wait the appropriate amount of time for it to fully take effect, sit down at the machine, release my breath, take a deep breath and blow into the machine. Next thing I know I am being pushed back into the chair as I had passed out. I have vague memories of an arm flailing and knocking over the water so very nicely provided by a very concerned technician. This isn't too uncommon, according to the technician. It is called a vesal vegal response, {and I apologize for misspelling any medical terms, but I'm far too lazy to try and figure out the real spelling.} and basically means you lose blood pressure to your brain, causing the passing out. I troop on with the test, but clearly not doing it properly as I have no desire to pass out again. For whatever reason, I cannot remember the reason, I am sitting in a chair away from the machine, resting. Apparently I look terrible because there are now two technicians and Alex hovering over me. Someone decides to check my blood pressure, it's very high. Two other people check it with higher results each time and I am placed in a wheelchair and wheeled down to the emergency room, two doors down. It is so considerate of me to need the emergency room while I am already at the hospital.


Here I am in the emergency room at 32 with, I swear!, every doctor in the hospital around me and most of the nurses. I'm getting poked, people are attaching things to me, that damn blood pressure cuff is bruising my arm, needles are brought out and inserted into me and no one is telling me what is going. So, go figure, my blood pressure keeps going right on up. There is this terrible rush and people are zooming around. My blood pressure hit into the 200's/190's or something very close to that. I come to find out they thought I was having a stroke, but of course I didn't know this at the time. I didn't find out really anything until my own doctor showed up, not far into all of this. The doctor in charge calls a cardiologist and finds out that what I am experiencing is completely normal for this vesal vegal response. Nothing needed to be done, I didn't need to be kept for observation but should go and see him for a echocardiogram....well, the ultrasound of your heart. I'm eventually released, go and have my visit and all looks good. But my heart just isn't feeling right now. Shortly after all of this happens we find out that Alex' school has removed the music program from the budget for the 2009-2010 school year. ACK! Luckily within two weeks he had another job. We pack up and move ourselves 8,000 feet up into the mountains.

So now I have to find a new doctor, one who won't think that I'm a quack or that I'm imagining things, because let me tell you....I thought I was a quack and imagining things. I hemmed and hawed, delayed as long as I possibly could, but at the begining of January, I really had no choice but to go in and see a doctor. It turned out to be the best move ever. My doctor is wonderful with a quick sense of humor and a willingness to talk to me and explain things. He doesn't think I'm off my rocker and he doesn't believe in prescribing medicine to prescribe it. Yay! I'm already happy! He doesn't know what is causing all of this, but decides to do some follow up tests that were not done after my emergency room visit. He placed me on one of those heart monitor thingys that one wears around with them and goes about their normal business and ordered an ultrasound of my neck to check one of the arteries there. {I can't even say it to spell it so sorry about that.} He did both of these things not actually expecting to find anything.....but he did.

I have an artirial heart flutter. Basically, the upper part of my heart beats faster than the bottom part of my heart. My first response is...YES! I'm not insane, that is exactly how I described it to him my first visit with him, so I know it's not all in my head. My next response is....................shock. I think I started blinking as the nurse called to tell me and set up an appointment to speak with him. I had until yesterday to wait to find out so I freaked out a bit. A lot, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I didn't expect anything to happen and now suddenly I have something wrong with my heart?? What?! Everyone take a deep breath with me and let it out. There, much better. Now my doctor does not think that this flutter is what is causing the passing out. As he told me he thinks that I have a lot of nerve. Not something I hear often. Then he went on to say that he thinks my nervous system might run at a higher rate than others. Now if I lived in say, caveman times, I'd be great at survival, but in this day and age it isn't needed. My body is over reacting to every little thing that happens when it doesn't need to. His theory is that this is why medicines almost always upset me and I have the many side effects listed. I'm just intune with what my body does.

I'm on a calcium channel blocker for the heart flutter and in a week or two, I will go back and see him and find out more about what steps we will do for the nervous system. Right now some heavy drugs are being considered, but I have some reservations, a lot of reservations. We'll see when I go back and talk to him about my concerns, now that I have had a little bit of time to digest things.

So this is the start of my blog, not all posts will be health related...and this long!