The Wednesday morning after getting out of the hospital, I woke up not feeling the greatest. Stacey finally got up and she fixed us some breakfast and then it happened. My heart started beating really funny so I checked the famous phone app and sure enough it was bouncing all over the place but was staying above 120. I thought to myself, Oh no, here we go again!!!!!
I called my cardiologist and told them what was going on and they calmly made me an appointment for 2:30 that afternoon. Stacey and I knew that we were going to be home again and luckily she was o.k. with that. I did get her to run to Walgreens and buy me one of those oxygen level/heart rate monitors that you can put on the end of your index finger like they use at the Dr.'s office. It was good to see that the phone app was giving us numbers very close to the one she bought. We just hung out and watched things and I felt tired and had no energy. We just watched TV until it was time to go to the Dr. Mark was meeting us there to find out what was going on.
Of course once I got there I had all the paperwork to fill out and finally the nurse called us to go back to a room to wait on the Dr. They weighed me and I was down 17 lbs since I got out of the hospital. I was barely eating I was scared to! I couldn't get the semi and Volkswagen out of my mind and the words "You are going to die"!
Once in the room the nurse went over my meds and then she did a EKG and laid it on the table for the Dr. He came in the room and he started going over my hospital stay and the results of my Nuclear Stress test. He wrote out a prescription and and handed it to me and at the same time started listening to my heart. That didn't last long. He took the prescription out of my hand and wadded it up and threw it away saying that he needed to get a EKG on me. We all told me that the nurse had done it and laid it on the table in the room. His laptop was sitting on top of it. He then started taking a mile a minute telling me that I was in Atrial Fibrillation and how we could go about treating it. He told me he could prescribe some meds and I could go home and I might be o.k. He started explaining to me what A. Fib. was and that when the heart decided to return to a normal rhythm that I run the risk of throwing a clot in the heart, to the brain or to the lung. He said the alternative was for me to go back to the hospital and be closely monitored and treated there. I asked him what did he want for me to do and he told me that I won't want to hear it but he felt like I should go straight to Emergency, so I said that I would and while we checked out they gave me orders for the ER. His office is attached to the hospital so this all happened really quick and there I was again being hooked up to a heart monitor, IV and chest x-rays. While I was in the ER waiting for a room my heart went back to beating normally. I guess I was very lucky because I had been taking Lovonox injections for years for blood clots in y legs and was on a maintenance dosage.
Mark went back to the office for about an hour and then went home to feed the cats. Stacey stayed with me. I was down in the ER till about 8:00 before they got a room ready for me. I had no dinner and luckily Mark was going to Chick-Fil-A to get him and Stacey something for dinner so Stacey was able to catch him to bring me something as well. It was kinda funny because Mark got to my room before we did but we all hit it within minutes of each other. Mark had also brought me my C-Pap machine. They stayed a while and helped me get setup for the night and there I was all over again. I didn't know what to expect next!
Thursday morning my cardiologist came by and wanted me to get a hold of my Gastroenterologist to see if he would release me to take the new blood thinner Xarelto. Well, I already had set up an appointment to see him the first of May to talk to him about gastric surgery and my Crohn's disease. I thought it would be easy to get this taken care of. My Cardiologist told me once I got his permission to take it to call his office and they would get me released to go home.
Well, getting this done was not easy. I found out that my Gastroenterologist had classified me as a new patient because he hadn't seen me in a while. I had seen another Dr. in the practice back when I was in and out of the hospital with cellulitis and subsequent Crohn's flare-ups. He had left the practice over a year ago so I had to start all over. I was pissed. I called the Cardiologist office and told them what was going on and Stacey and I just waited and waited and waited. Dr. Mazur finally came by around 6:00 to give me two new prescriptions and told me to stop the Lovonox and take a 350 mg aspirin once a day. He left and Mark arrived and we got everything packed up and I got my release from the hospital the second time. Mark went ahead to feed the cats and Stacey and I went to get my new drugs and meet hims at home. It took a couple of trip to different Walgreen's to find someone who had the drugs in stock. We finally got home around 8:30 that night. We managed some dinner and we all were tired.
Stacey's grandfather on her mother's side of the family hadn't been doing well so her plans were to go and see him close to Austin for the day. She didn't really want to go and leave me but I told her I would be fine and we could talk my phone on the way. She went and she was glad that she did. We made plans to have a good time just the 3 of us on Saturday before she had to drive back to Topeka. I can't even put into words how much it meant to have her with me that week. We really got close! After years of being so torn apart it was just incredible to have all the time we had. Healing in all kinds of ways.
Saturday, we had breakfast and then we did a little shopping to get me out moving and trust me as weak as I am not moving much over the last couple of years it was hard!!!! I walked from the front of a Stein-mart store to the back looking at sunglasses for Stacey and shoes for me. I did not think I was going to make it out of the store back to the car They went and got me something cold to drink and then we hit Marshall's. We looked for shoes and sunglasses again and we almost found me some shoes and we did score Stacey's new white sunglasses! She had been looking forever for them!
We went home to freshen up and then we headed across town because we had made reservations at The Melting Pot for dinner. We had so much fun cooking all the different fondues and just experiencing such a place together. My heart started skipping around again but it calmed down. We got home and sat up and talked for a while and then we hit the hay because Stacey had to get up and leave early the next morning. I nearly cried myself to sleep because I didn't want her to go back home.
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