I went to the dentist today. It was fun, as routine dental visits are when pain, injections, pliers, and whatnot are not involved. Now my teeth are absurdly clean and as usual I have vowed to floss everyday again.

I got to see Sumi again. I believe she has the run of most places in the office. I noted that there are cat-sized openings in many of the doors.

In this picture she is disgruntled because I did not let her out when I entered the waiting area (which does not have a cat door). After a bit she spent much time sniffing my boots and pants before escaping when another person entered the room.

born 29 February 2008 7:29pm

The weekend was kinda blah. I caught up on my sleep on Saturday and later worked. Amanda had clinic in the morning and then went off knitting all afternoon. She also got a “cute cut for the winter”.

Sunday we went off to Tukwila to pick up the cosleeper because the progeny could appear at any moment really. We also ordered a car seat. What more does one need, eh? We also picked up a exercise ball for Amanda for stretching purposes.

We had lunch at Red Robin. I had a lot of greasy fish and chips. Aside: I really need to start going to the gym again. Since there are bottomless fries there, a waitperson came by and offered two(!) more baskets of fries, but Amanda denied me by only accepting one. Grr.

We were going to do more errands, but Mandy called. She was back from her skiiing adventure, so we headed back home so she and Amanda could go grocery shopping. I cleaned up the house and worked. Which I did for most of the evening and early morning.

It snowed in the area on Monday, so I was wary about going to work. Amanda’s morning stuff was canceled, so I took a nap while Amanda did… something. I was going to just work at home because I did not want to deal with weird weather traffic, but when I looked at the traffic reports online, no one was on the roads. So I went in anyway. The evening was more work. I also watched select scenes from the Matrix movies. Amanda watched a bit before falling asleep on the couch.
So life was not exciting last week. We worked a lot. But take a look at this:

Piglet makes everything more exciting!

07 JAN 2008 – MONDAY
Amanda had an interview scheduled on Monday morning, so I prepared to drop her off before going to work. We had a vaguely normal bfast of fake bacon, english muffins, and some cashews for me, and we made coffee and tea for the road. I was feeling a little funny and commented that my pulse was racing for some reason. Amanda seemed to verify that fact, but evidently filed it away under one of the many times I “feel funny”.

On Rainier near I90, I apparently was not looking too hot, and I was having problems finishing sentences without taking a breath. I felt exactly like the many times I have hiked up to 10k-14k feet after starting from sea level. Amanda took my pulse again and this time it had slowed down enough to notice that it was definitely irregular.

“I think you’re in A-Fib!”

I was thinking that I’d just drop her off and reconsider things once I got to work, but she ordered me to pull over and insisted I go to Urgent Care (i.e. Group Health‘s emergency services), as she did not want me passing out on the interstate. Or like dying in some other manner.
She dropped me off and then looked for a place to park. On the way, we had joked about what my primary complaint should be … “my wife thinks I have a-fib” … but I settled on “rapid heart rate and difficulty beathing”. Fortunately, I was seen immediately; I guess possible MI or whatever would do that, but it was also first thing in the morning, so no one was really around.

The nurse was very nice. She worked for a contract agency and had been at UW Medical Center previously, so she knew some of the Family Medicine interns. She asked me a few questions, had me put on a gown top, and hooked me up to a monitor. Amanda busted in around this time and the nurse laughingly chastised her for not knocking. She and Amanda were amused that I had totally screwed up putting on the gown top in my vaguely confused state.

“Yup, you’re in A-Fib”. Amanda was alarmed at how low my blood pressure was, but a second reading was a bit higher.

The nurse then decided to put me in another room with their heart stuff, wall oxygen, and code stuff (fer when someone is like seriously dying). I got hooked up to said oxygen, got an IV, got various blood tests, and a more detailed 12 lead EKG (seen in the previous entry). I presume they did the EKG for documentation purposes. Anyway, one of the doctors came in for a talk. He verified I knew what was going on and said that they were just to rule out various things (via the tests). At this point, my heart rate was still very irregular… usually hovering in the 110-120 range, but sometimes spiking up to 180 or 200. It was actually hard not to watch the monitor as it was like a more entertaining screen saver.

In terms of dealing with the a-fib, he said that I could wait, take drugs, or get cardioverted (shocking the heart to induce a normal rhythm). Since a) my heart rate was relatively low b) I knew reasonably when it started waiting was a good option and drugs were not necessary at the moment. The drugs would be for slowing the heart rate down and preventing blood clots from forming, traveling to my brain, and me stroking out and becoming gimpy (as Amanda would say). Conceivably I could go home and come back the next day as they try to get people back into a normal rhythm within 48 hours (I believe clotting is a much bigger risk afterwards).
I decided to wait and see if I converted automagically by four in the afternoon, and if not, I would go ahead and get shocked. No point in having to come back in the morning since I was already there and probably would be there for a while.

Amanda had clinic in the afternoon, but she went to the nearby Safeway to get me some reading material: a New York Times, Wired, and a healthy cooking magazine. She also got a snack and coffee for herself. I could eat and drink nothing in preparation for possible shocking; I got fluids via the IV instead. Amanda also had them give me these nasty lemon glycerin swab things that supposedly help keep your mouth moist, but I used only one.

Amanda stayed until about 11am, at which time the doctor came in and said that I “still have not threatened a normal sinus rhythm”. He noted the presence of the snack and coffee, but Amanda assured him of my no-food-no-drink compliance.

The monitor picture shows what was typically going on when I was lying down and not moving. It’s actually not that exciting here. Moving did all kinds of cute things to the monitor; I should have taken a movie of it. The fuzzy purple rectangular block flashed “IRREGULAR” continuously, as if anyone actually there could not tell.

When Amanda left I just sat around reading or spacing out. Hospital gurneys are not really all the comfortable, and I had all kinds of wires and tubes attached to me, so I could not really move around. Any type of movement tented to double my heart rate, so I avoided moving anyway. The automatic blood pressure cuff thing was amusing as well as it randomly (or perhaps when the nurses wanted another reading) engaged. When it was on the same arm as my IV… they moved it for whatever reason at times… it actually moved from uncomfortable to “ya, this kinda sucks” territory. As for the IV, I had never had one before, and it was rather cool how effectively one could get rehydrated. It did limit the range of motion of my arm, but I eventually decided to bend it anyway and was rewarded later with a massive bruise in the bend of my elbow. I tried to read the NYT, but I noticed that reading the news blew my heart rate over 200, so I stopped and read the cooking magazine instead.

A new nurse had started that day, so my main nurse was giving her a tour and I got to see everything in the room and what it did.

Eventually, they brought another patient in who I presume they had to rule out also (rule out for MI/heart attack that is). She was having chest pains that radiated out to her arms. She must have been 80+ though, so I think heart problems are more common in her age group. They were going to give her all kinds of things, but they held off when she said that she was feeling better, so they just kept her around for observation.

Some time in the afternoon my heart decided to stop fooling around and return to its usual boring 70-80 bpm. Though I did not see the actual moment of change, I did look at the monitor in time to see the squiggly tracings morph into a normal heart rhythm. woot. No stopping and restarting of heart via electric shocks for me today.

Now the monitor shows a boring normal heart.

They decided to have me hang out for a while longer to make sure all was well. The doctor came in and discussed future measures… basically avoid caffeine and alcohol and see a cardiologist ASAP. He said that I could take a beta blocker for prophylactic purposes in case my heart freaks out again while I was waiting to see the cardiologist, but I declined.

Amanda was caught up at clinic, so I just sat around the waiting room until she arrived. I had talked to her about the aforementioned beta blocker, and she said that she would be more comfortable if I was on said drug, so we went off to the pharmacy when she arrived to pick it up.
Amanda magnanimously let me eat whatever I wanted, so we went to Chinoise on Madison for sushi. She vetoed the beer (my first choice) and tea (my second). I did have a lot of sushi, which was nice, although it was of kinda mediocre quality.

At home Amanda laid down the new law of no more caffeine. Yikes! Dropping from my normal consumption of 5-20 servings a day of tea and diet coke would really really suck.

The heart is now well behaved. This pic looks much better than the previous one.

edit: I also got a chest xray in the room. It was done by a wisp of a tech who must have been under five feet while the portable apparatus was rather huge. I wonder if I can get a copy of it.