Heart of the matter
So the last two weeks have been a little nutty.
10 years or so ago my heart did this weird flip-floppy thing. And it kept doing it. I ended up in the emergency room where they told me I was fine and not to worry about it. It did it several more times over the next few years, but then it eventually stopped.
Until almost 3 weeks ago. It did it. Now, when it would happen before I would tell myself that I was fine, and just get through it. I’m a lot more filled with anxiety these days. For some reason, I couldn’t shake it. It got in my head. So while it was still doing it, I was stressing myself out beyond belief. I decided to go to the doctor and get checked out, hopefully hearing a, “you’re fine, don’t worry about it.”
That is what I heard, but it came with a, “but we should do some tests…” Sigh. Now, being the analytical person that I am, I knew that I would feel better after the tests were done, but that meant I had to wait. And wait a while as my doctor was going to be out of town for a week. So I did a 24 hour holter monitor for my heart, and they did some blood work.
Today I went see the doctor, and he told me that everything is in fact fine. They think it is completely caused by stress. The feeling, and this I already knew, is caused when your heart skips a beat. Skips happen to everybody. But sometimes stronger skips you can feel, and things like stress and anxiety can cause these bursts of skips. They do want to do a sonogram of my heart, just as a final check that everything is okay, but the doctor told me that I should not worry about it, they don’t expect to see anything. The only reason they want to do this “echo” is some of the skips on the heart monitor were in the lower part of the heart. But since these were actually the ones that I couldn’t feel, they are not concerned. When the sonogram comes back negative the chances of me having something wrong with my heart will be close to zero.
So that is why I haven’t been updating the past few weeks. I don’t deal well with unknowns. I am in the best physical shape of my life, but there was little voice in my head telling me that I was never going to get to race my bike again. That something was seriously wrong with me. Ahhh, anxiety.
Luckily, that voice seems to be wrong.
Tomorrow we are heading to Lake Tahoe for a friend’s wedding. It should be a nice few days. I’m looking forward to coming back to Austin rested and getting back on the bike and getting back in our routine for a little bit. With as crazy as this summer has been, I find myself holding quite precious those few moments of time where we get to act “normal.” I am a person that finds peace in routine, I have learned this about myself.
