(Phaysis)

To the concerned, I am bruised but not broken. My heart is ok, but you should see the veins on my left arm. Yesterday’s trip to the ER was humbling but yielded a potentially positive outcome.

It started with a sip of soda; some went down my windpipe and caused me to cough forcefully. This is a bad thing — with me, coughs almost always end in hiccups (after smoking for 9 years, I can’t cough anymore – I have to hack). So, the hiccups inevitably began and I could not silence them soon enough. The unfortunate chain of events ended in tachycardia: the sudden, sustained doubling of my heartrate.

I’ve had this before, too many times. Went to the ER for it on one extremely long case. Usually lasts five to thirty seconds until my heart finally settles down. But yesterday morning, after I tried all my doctor-recommended tricks to end it, I knew it was going to last, so I called to my roomate to take me to the ER.

All the signs, cars, stop lights, people, activity – you notice the absurdity of it all when you’re sitting in a passenger seat and your vehicle is going in slow motion, your pulse is 180bpm and your heart feels like it wants to die. You feel completely unimportant; the world goes on regardless of your emergent health.

Tachycardia is not fatal; there’s a 1% to 3% chance of death from cardiac arrest. It feels like it’s eminent, though; the heart is on a freewheeling feedback where it still pumps blood but does so incredibly inefficiently. When your pulse returns to normal, you almost can’t feel it anymore, but you’re still alive. It’s otherworldly to not feel your own pulse, but you’re glad it’s settled down. You can relax.

I went to the ER hoping that they could get the ECG leads on me before it settled; sadly, my heart once again returned to normal before I could see a triage nurse. For a proper diagnosis, they need to see it happening. I considered trying to induce it, a potentially dangerous proposition, but it’d be the best place to try that kind of thing.

The doctor on staff mentioned that it might be a condition known as WPW, or Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome; the cardiologist on call suggested it, and the staff doctor seemed to agree. Basically, the heart has a nerve bundle between the upper and lower chambers which is responsible for transmitting the heartbeat impulse between halves while in the process delaying the beat of the lower chambers.

People with WPW also have a rogue nerve elsewhere between the halves that causes the impulse to be sent too soon and on rare occasion will cause a circular impulse loop, resulting in tachycardia. WPW is treatable with medication and in most cases (I’m assuming) curable with a procedure called radio-frequency ablation where heart surgeons run a catheter to the site of the rogue nerve and burn it with radio energy.

This errant nerve is formed at gestation but its effects are generally not seen until the person is between 11 and 40 years of age. I’ve had this problem for at least since 25. I had always associated it with smoking or too much caffiene; although that exacerbates the situation, it is not the cause.

The ER doctor recommended I see the cardiologist for a follow-up. Gave me his pager and office numbers. Since I have new insurance, I need to check with my provider to ensure I can see this specialist without referral from my primary physician. Politics and money first, health second. As much as I hate using the phone, I will start making some calls tomorrow morning. Even if the ER trip was a wash, this important lead makes it worth the effort.

I noticed that my journal has been really quiet this year. So far, 9 entries total since January. Nothing in the past month and a half. And you’ve most likely noticed too; I apologize.

You see, I’ve had a bad month. Really bad. July started with a wimper, went out with a sigh. The 4th of July wasn’t kind to me; it was raining pleasantly, but I stayed inside instead of watching the fireworks downtown. Had coffee, got a migraine, went home early. The rest of that week, I started hurting in my lower abdomen; thought it was gas pain, so I lived on a diet of simethicone and wheat bread. No luck. That friday, I started hurting worse at work. I went home after work and stayed home instead of going to the usual friday night gathering I do. Tried laying down, sitting down, standing up, walking around, nothing I did could alleviate the pain in my lower-right abdomen. It was then that it struck me: that’s where my appendix is. I knew I needed to go to the ER, so I cleaned up, prepped some things in case I needed to be hospitalized, and my roomate took me there.

A urine test, blood test, CT scan (complete with having to drink a half liter of barium sulfate on a nauseous stomach), a prostate check, and two shots of morphine later (because of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced), the doctor sent me home with a prescription of Ciprofloxacin (an antibiotic) and a treatment plan for…prostatitis. I had a prostate infection. How? I don’t know. But it hurt.

My fever came and went that weekend, and the infection started going away. In my followup appointment with my regular doctor, he cut my four-week prescription regimen down to three, stating that the extra week is really just overkill. So, after experiencing the bad side effects for a few days, I didn’t argue the point.

Well, the side effects are thus: stomach pain, depression, fatigue, susceptibility to tendonitis and tendon damage, and in some extreme cases, paranoia. Basically, I sat like a lump from the time I got home from work until I went to bed, where I laid like a lump and had fitful sleep broken up by extreme dreams, another side effect.

I knew I had stuff I could do. I knew I could have been writing about it, getting it all off my chest, putting out the painful personal truths that I was seeing in my lowered state. But I lost my motivation, lost my drive. Nothing mattered, nothing meant anything. I just sat there at my desk and watched TV. Tuned in, dropped out. For a month. I knew the depression was due to the Cipro, but at times I could not be sure.

Well, my last dose was the last friday of the month, almost a week ago. I felt fine and was glad to have finished the regimen. Except I felt a tenderness in my middle back, near my kidneys. A secondary infection? I dunno, but by monday I was fine. Until this morning when I started feeling more pangs in my lower abdomen again. So, I’ve been taking it easy, pushing the fluids, taking the cranberry pills, loosening my belt. I put myself back on the Cipro tonight; already feeling the twisting of my stomach. If nothing is better by monday, then I’ll see the doc again.

Seems every time I make a journal entry, it’s bad health news. Maybe I’m turning the corner at the old age of 34. It’s all downhill from here. I dunno, it’s just that I have things to say, but no will to post them for the world to see when really they’re kinda personal thoughts. I have some further issues to deal with there, and now that I’m back on the Cipro, it won’t get any easier.

Two weeks ago I looked forward in time to this three-day holiday weekend and saw a bit of fun, frivolity, high times. Now that there’s only about 4 hours left of it, there’s still hope for the weekend delivering on those visions.

My fingers are crossed.

Today, scratch that, this weekend has found me in a weird mood. Restless, trying to escape the pervasive heat, trying to deal with parts of my body that let me down. Last monday I was getting dressed for work and inhaled some saliva after brushing my teeth. So I coughed. And each cough was punctuated by a hiccup. The coughing stopped, but the hiccups stayed. A few minutes later, I was bent over to pick up some socks in the closet when a hiccup hit me, sending my heart into another of its famous tachycardiac fits. Pulse shot to 180bpm (it’s normally 80~90bpm at rest). And it was rough. Lasted longer than usual (30 to 90 seconds). Much longer.

I had my roomate drive me to the E.R. where no sooner do I finish the paperwork and sit down to wait on my name to be called the tachycardia stops, my blood pressure drops, and I settle down. Total time: 15 minutes – the longest spell to date, and that’s scary. I was sore, and pissed that I couldn’t get an EKG before it was finished (that’s the only way to diagnose the cause of tachycardia). So I wasted time at the ER. And money.

The past two weeks have been kinda shitty moneywise. It was good that I did some math on my expenses because after all five of my autodebited bills come out of my checking account I’ll have around $150 left, and that’s to be spent on food, etc. I’ve been living skinny, and it’s scaring me. Always one paycheck from disaster. I want a job that pays better than my current job. I’m considering taking a part-time job in addition to my regular gig; put my wasted nights to good use.

Apparently, times aren’t tough just for me: I found out two weeks ago that my mother is sick again. The woman was too proud to call me to let me know (“I didn’t want to bother you…”). She’s unable to work and is down with full-body pains. Can only walk around with canes and walkers. So she has no money coming in, and the V.A. doctor will only give her pain killers instead of trying to give her quicker access to getting tested for Multiple Schlerosis. She has to be diagnosed with MS to be given the essential drugs she needs to minimize the MS attacks and get on with life. And things are moving glacially while she’s living the bad life on the skids.

It bothers me that I can’t afford to help my mother more; I shipped her two books, a card, and $40. She has food stamps, so she’s not hungry, but nobody visits her, hardly anyone calls her, apparently my sister will have nothing to do with her – and she lives in the same town (I need to get to the bottom of that) – and my mom’s just too young to be going through this kind of thing.

So I guess I have a few issues to deal with. Normally I am able to have good weekends and even better 3-day holiday weekends, but it’s not possible this year. Not at all. Don’t expect me to celebrate much.

OK, I’ll get you folks up to speed on what’s been going on with me. For the last 5 days my lungs have been twinging, spasming, and producing excess phlegm. Sunday night it reached a head: I laid down for sleep and kept getting panicked because I had extra difficulty breathing. I had had enough. So I checked myself into the E.R. at Seton Hospital.

After five hours of getting tested, injected, inspected, treated, x-rayed, heart-monitored, and all else, the doctors couldn’t pinpoint why my lungs were spasming. Our only conclusion is that my situation gets worse when I smoke, especially when I smoke like I have been for the past few months. Folks, this is not good.

The doctor did find something wrong when he had an EKG done on me. Found I have a slight abnormality with my heart. Either some scar tissue or more likely some conductivity problem between my upper heart and my lower heart, like a neural pathway is too active. I have experienced sudden flutters and speed-ups before. This also is not good.

Since the albuterol treatments didn’t help, since the x-rays didn’t turn up anything (thankfully), since the EKG’s didn’t turn up anything conclusive, I am left with only one, knowable fact. I need to quit smoking. Now. If I want to get better.

I’ve known for a long while that all of my cardio-pulmonary problems, most of my digestive problems, many of my stress-panic problems, stem from my excessive tobacco usage. There’s no denying that. There’s no point in denying any of this. I’m smoking myself to death. It was fine way back when, when I didn’t have the effects of 8-years’ damage, when I didn’t find myself thinking 1 pack a day wasn’t bad, when my body didn’t know what the hell a panic attack felt like, when I found myself saying, “Oh, I’m not addicted – what is this thing we call ‘addiction’ anyways, eh?” But it’s not fine now.

I worked two hours yesterday after being up all night at the ER. Our secretary and everyone else who knew my situation told me I should go home, and I did. I attempted to call my doctor, but his office was closed for lunch. So, being weak with sleep, I laid down for bed around 12:30pm. I finally got out of bed around 5:30 this morning. And interestingly enough, I did not crave a cigarette. As long as I associate the smell, taste, look of a pack of Marlboro Lights with clenched lungs, I think I might nick this nic-thing. For some stupid reason, though, I forgot this and had half of a cigarette to curb a small crave, and now I’m dealing with the clenching again. Stupid move, stupid mistake.

The first stupid mistake was going to the quickmart when I got home from that bad date in October ’95. Stupid, self-destructive move. And how stupid of me to keep blaming my addiction on that fateful night.

I’m finding myself remembering what life was like without cigarettes. Luckily, I started when I was 23, so I have plenty of years worth of memories untinged by smoking, plenty of reference to go by. I remember having unhampered sense of smell, of taste. I remember running across campus with no remorse, no passing out. I remember hanging out indoors for hours on end without having to step outside.

Friends, this is something I must do. If I’m AWOL for some time, I hope you’ll understand.