Electrician Back on Duty after Several Surgeries
August 15, 2007
Hello Everyone. I’m back and I’ve survived several surgeries. To everyone that sent emails, cards and flowers while I was in the hospital, thank you very much. Your support and thoughts meant a lot. To those of you that do not know what happened, I was diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia about 10 or 11 months ago; and to be honest, it nearly kicked my butt.
So what the heck is supraventricular tachycardia? Well, ironically, it means my heart was short circuiting causing it to beat very fast; a few times over 300 beats per minute. My heart just all of a sudden started to race one day while I was on a jobsite. While my heart was racing, I felt like I was going to pass out. My heart raced three times a day, approximately 45 minutes each time, for the next three days.
Then my wife caught on and forced me into going to the hospital. What a horrifying experience that was. The first visit wasn’t so bad, they hooked me up to a monitor, started an IV, gave me oxygen, took a lot of blood, stuck several patches on me to take an EKG and then a chest x-ray.
From here the doctors recommended I see a cardiologist. The cardiologist took me in the next day and hooked me up to a holter monitor (basically, a portable EKG) that I had to wear for the next 24 hours. In the next 24 hours, my heart “freaked out” more than 40 times.
I revisited the cardiologist the next day to get the results of the holter monitor’s recording. Two nurses brought me into an examination room. The first nurse took off the monitor, handed it to the second nurse, then the second nurse left the room with the monitor.
Then the first nurse proceeded to remove all of the patches that were on my chest. She removed the last patch and I was just about to put my shirt on when the second nurse came back into the room. She had a very serious look on her face and she said “the cardiologist wants you to go to the ER immediately”.
My heart continued to race in the ER and a few times my heart rate went over 300 beats per minute. The doctors became very concerned and a lot of things happened very quickly. One of the nurses came at me with a needle and I wanted to know what was being injected into my body. That’s when the doctor spoke up and said this is going to stop my heart for about 6 seconds to hopefully, get the rhythm back under control and not to panic. They are going to stop my heart for 6 seconds and I shouldn’t panic?
Well, somehow I managed to keep it together. When they injected this stuff (adenasine I think) into the IV, I felt it go up my arm to my shoulder. Then it felt like the blood stopped pumping from my chest to my toes. Six seconds later it felt like the blood began flowing again from my chest to my toes.
From here, the ER doctors had me admitted into the ICU where I stayed for a couple of days. Later that eveing, in the ICU, they got my heart rate under control with this medicine called Procainamide. This worked for about a month, then my heart started racing again.
The cardiologist recommended that I have a catheter ablation. This is where they insert a catheter through an artery in my groin and thread it into my heart. Then they send a radio wave down this catheter to ablate or “zap” specific spots on my heart. The logic is, where they “zap” my heart, scar tissue is created making that spot on my heart non-conductive.
The catheter ablation did not work. The doctors tried several different medications that didn’t work either. Finally, the doctors decided to attach a defribulator to my heart. This is supposed to shock my heart everytime it races to keep the rhythm under control. Hopefully, this was the final surgery. I’ve spent way too much time in the hospital and emergerncy room. The doctors and nurses were all very nice and extremely helpful, but it’s time to get back to work and get on with my life.
I hope to start answering questions again in tomorrow’s post. It looks like there’s a lot of great electrical questions you have asked. It’s going to take me a while to get caught up. So, if you need your electrical question answered immediately, I offer this service for a fee at ezDIYelectricity.com. I charge $17.00 for a 10 minute or less phone consultation. The service is also offer via email for $17.00 per question with up to 3 replies and via instant messenger (IM) for $17.00 for 10 minute intervals.
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