As i wasn't feeling too well on thursday, i took the day off uni and work, and by the evening, i was feeling close to 100%. I slept at 10.30pm, but woke up at 11.30pm feeling very cold and was shivering uncontrollably, even though i was wearing a beanie, 3 layers of clothing, was under 2 doonas and had the heater in my room going. I was shaking so hard that i couldn't hold a glass of water without spilling its contents.
Decided to call 000 at 12am, as it didn't seem right that i'm shaking so much that my legs started to cramp up. Spoke to the clinical nurse on 000, who asked me heaps of questions, and who could tell from my voice that i was shaking terribly, but she refused to send me an ambulance, though she said that i needed to get to the hospital within the next 1 to 2 hours. By the time i hanged up the phone, i was feeling very hot, and started throwing up. My housemate send me to the hospital, can't remember much about the journey there. I do remember collapsing outside of emergency.
The doctors at ED told me that my heart rate was slightly over 200bpm, and that the ecg showed that i was in atrial flutter and my blood was not circulating at all. Both my legs were blue by this time, and I couldn't feel my arms or my legs. They said that i should be all right once they inject a drug which stops the heart, apparently it is a very broken down form of the drug and that the effects would only last 5 to 10 seconds, and that usually 1 dose is enough. In the end, they used 4 doses, and my heart rate didn't change. I knew i was in deep sh** when after the 2nd dose, the nurses and doctors stopped chatting, and they all had this look on their face, and none of them would look me in the eyes.
The last resort was to use the defibrillator on me, it wasn't the most pleasant sensation. My whole body jumped up when electrical current hit my chest. That didn't do too much either, my heart rate dropped to 190, but refused to go any lower. I remember telling the nurse then that i felt better, and her response was,"Are you sure? You can't be serious, coz your heart rate is still at 190." I found that quite amusing, strangely enough...
Anyway, they couldn't/didn't do anything else to me and i started lapsing in/out of consciousness. When i spoke to the nurse next, she told me my heart rate started dropping very slowly about 45 minutes after the last intervention. I was still under the resus area of ED till about noon on friday, only got transfered to the wards on friday evening after my heart rate came down to about 80bpm. The ED consultant had a chat with me and told me that they had absolutely no idea what happened to me, why their intervention did not work and how my heart rate reverted on its own. That was not very comforting to say the very least.I was also told that if my heart rate had stayed at 200bpm for another 15 minutes, well, i wouldn't be typing this email today. But one thing all the doctors agreed on was that it is very highly unlikely that it is going to happen again. The doctors are sticking to the story of a viral attack of the heart, even though all the cultures and tests have turned up clean.
There's no permanent damage to my heart and i'm due to go in for a ultrasound of the heart, as well as a cardiology follow-up. Apart from a throbbing head, nausea, a dull achy sensation in my left chest and feeling cold, I'm not too bad.
K.
