Heart to Heart – Updated

On Wednesday night, H came over to me after watching Lost and asked me to feel his chest. His heart was racing. I told him to lie down and got him a glass of water, but that didn’t help. He said that it felt like his heartbeat was not just fast but also irregular. I told him to call the local urgent care and see if he should go in. I thought they might tell him it wasn’t worth coming in. When he called, he ended up on hold. It was so close to the urgent care’s closing time that if he waited for someone to talk to he wouldn’t have made it there on time, so he just hung up and went.

When H got to the urgent care, he checked the “yes” box on the intake form for the question, “Are you experiencing a problem with your heart?” When H handed the form to the nurse at the front desk, she confirmed that he was having heart problems and took him back to the doctor right away, instead of making him wait. They hooked H up to an EKG machine, and his heart was beating at twice its normal rate and his heart rate wasn’t steady. H called to tell me that an ambulance had been called to take him to the ER. I could hear the fear in his voice. I told him that I would meet him at the ER.

I know now that I never should have let him drive himself to urgent care in the first place. I didn’t think that anything was actually wrong with H. I wanted H to go to the urgent care because I don’t think you can mess around with a possible heart issue, but I assumed that the doctor would look at him and tell him not to drink so much caffeine or something, and that would be that. Also, B was already asleep, and I didn’t want to wake him up and then chase an exhausted whining crazy baby around a doctor’s office. I know that’s selfish, but I thought H was ok. Obviously, I was wrong.

I started trying to figure out what I should pack for B. I pictured myself trying to keep B from pressing all the buttons in an ER room and crawling all over H, and I realized that taking B was going to add even more stress to the hospital experience. So I called Anna and asked her if she could come over and stay with B while I went to the hospital. When I started telling her that H was having heart problems and was being sent to the ER in an ambulance, I started crying. I feel so bad for Anna. She got a call from a blog friend at 10 pm asking her to leave her house for several hours, and she was basically forced into it because how do you say no to some crying lady on the phone. Anna was wonderful, fantastic, and the nicest person ever and agreed to come over, and then my phone broke mid-conversation. I couldn’t call her back. She called me back, and my phone rang, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t answer it. After trying everything, I found that if I turned part of the phone and pressed the sides together, it worked. So I called Anna back and offered to bring B to her house, but she lied and said it was just as easy for her to come to my house, so she did. You guys, I owe her something huge. Like if we have another kid, boy or girl, I think we have to name it Anna.

To make a long story a little bit less long, I went to the ER and sat with H for a few hours. His heart stabilized. The doctors took x-rays and ran tests. They determined that one of the chambers of his heart wasn’t pumping blood normally, but we don’t yet know why. H has an appointment with a cardiologist for tomorrow morning, so we’ll hopefully know more after that.

Update: The cardiologist gave H a prescription for beta blockers, would should help to keep his heart rate steady. H’s thyroid levels are a little low, which can apparently be related to heart issues, so there will be some follow up there. H also has to do the treadmill stress test and do a sleep study to see if he has sleep apnea (which can also be related to heart issues). But the doctor said H is in no immediate danger. In fact, H may be completely fine, but the extra tests will confirm all that. In other words, H is doing well. Thank you so much for all your kind thoughts and words.

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