So...what is Atrial Fibrillation? Also know as Afib, AF, or the reason I felt like crap for the last half of my shift last night. Thanks be to God that I was working with anoter nurse and didn't have to really do much. Ok...so...here we go.
Since my first year in college I've had these irregular heart beats. My mom's mom had a LONG standing history of heart disease...more specifically she had Idiopathic Hypertrophic Subaortic Stenosis. In other words...she had a thick stiff heart that didn't pump very well. In March of 1979 my grandma Shirley went down to the Texas Heart Institute to have her Myomectomy to help ease this condition and she also had her mitral valve fixed. In the end...she spent a little over three weeks down in Texas recovering from open heart surgery. With a myomectomy they shave out peices of the heart to help it pump better.
This is a picture to help illistrate what her heart might have looked like. On the left is a healthy heart and on the right there is a heart like my grandma's.
So...anyway, when I was in my frist year of nursing school and I was having all these heart palpitations (irregular heart beats) my mom shipped me right off to see a cardiologist in Sioux City. They did EKG's, an Echocardiogram, and also drew some lab work. Everything came up fine, but they decided to place me on an even monitor to watch the electrical conduction of my heart. In the end...they told me to lay off the caffine and try and get some rest.
Thankfully...I took the doctor's advice and didn't have much of a problem with my heart until I was pregnant with Sophia. When I was prego with Nator I started having these fast irregular heart beats that would last for short bursts of time. When I held my breath and beared down (vagaling) I was able to slow my heart down enough to get me back into a regular heart beat. The doctor said...so...since you are a cardiac nurse...why don't you go see one of your doctors. In the end...nothing again...
Fast forward to Ian's pregnancy. Not sure if it was b/c I weighed more when I started my pregnancy with Ian or some type of hormonal thing, but I started to have more frequent bouts of this irregular heart beat. In Feburary...just a little over a month before he was born I started to get this really fast heart beat and I got ultra dizzy and light headed. I happened to be at work so I hooked myself up to a heart monitor...sure enough...what I didn't want to be true was true. I was in this nasty, fast, irregular heart rtythm called atrial fibrillation. Lucky for me I was albe to break myself out of it like I had in the past...by vagaling. My cardiologist said...lay off the caffine and take a beta-bloker as needed.
Below is a picture of the electrical pathways in a heart in a normal beat (sinus rhythm) and then a picture of a heart in Afib.
In Afib...you loose a little extra kick with you heart pumping and usually your heart gets going super fast.
That would be me from 3:40 a.m. this morning to the current moment. Now...you ask..."Rose, why exactaly do people have Afib?" Well, there are lots of reasons: heart disease, caffine induced, sleep deprivation, and genetics. There are more reasons but my sleep deprived state is blocking them out right now.
In any case, I'm planning on calling my cardiologist to have a check over. I'm hoping that you can all say a little prayer that this is nothing and I just have to learn to get some sleep. I'd really appreciate it and I hope it helps to bring peace of mind to me.
Well, I should try and help myself out and get some rest. Hope you all have a great day!!!
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