gerri, you ain't a kiddin it gets your heart a pumpin! It is pumping out of your chest wall.

Some one asked how I was doing. I was OK about all of this until today. I am very winded most of the time and I worry about that. I know one part of it is my heart rate. I normally run about 46 but I have been running 39 or 40 also. When I get from the grocery store to the car, get my body in the car, put my purse where it needs to be, put my sea belt off, that is all I can do. My husband can't drive until tomorrow and yesterday he didn't understand why after I got out of the parking place at Walmart, I drove behind Walmart and just stopped. I needed to get out of the handicapped place because some one else was waiting for me. I know how much I appreciate them and wanted to get out for them. So I just went behind the store and stopped and caught my breath. It's pretty much the same for any activity.

Many years ago I developed a condition, quite benign, called PAT. The nurses in here know what it is. My heart rate can really get up there and go REAL fast and there is no reason for it. Get on medicine and it's cured. So I need on my beta blocker but it seems the beta blocker is taking it down TOOOOOO low now. So last night trying to go to sleep I was invisioning me going into the office tomorrow. I know from my husband being in the same office they do an EKG the first thing. So doctor sees this, listens to my symptoms, takes into consideration and says I need a pacemaker right then and there. So since I can't get into the pacemaker lab, they put me in ICU to put me on a temporary external pacemaker. I am seeing all these things that can happen. Just one of the problems with being a nurse, especially a cardiac nurse. I see a cardiac cath and then open heart surgery, and pacemaker. So I am a nervous wreck right now. And all it may need is a different beta blocker to make sure my heart rate doesn't go to 200 again but just stays around 60. And right now a heart rate of 54 feels real hard in my chest.

My husband was not going to go with me, it's to early in the morning and neither of us are early people but he knows how concerned I am and he is going with me. Plus, tomorrow is his one month day from his last surgery and he can drive! He knows how upset I am that he has never met my neurologist and I have been with her since 1997.