Mom’s in the hospital for recurring heart racing and lightheadedness. She went in with some serious tachycardia that started the night before. Here’s a pic:
Heart rate of 137! She also had atrial fibrillation - I think - because there’s multiple irregular P-waves. Take that reading with a grain of salt. Robyn taught me a little about reading EKGs, but I’m an armchair quarterback here.
They thinned her blood a bit, and while she, her PCP and I were talking, she said she felt lightheaded. At the same time the EKG flatined for 3 seconds, and then she went back to a normal (sinus) wave and heart rate:
She experiences lightheadedness, but it’s her heart stopping. Pretty scary.
More tests tomorrow and possibly intervention. We’ll see what happens.
Update (3/23/07):She needed a pacemaker - and got one yesterday. Very simple procedure that didn’t even require general anesthesia. It even came with an instruction manual.
She has a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (a thickening of the heart muscle) that caused her sinus node (the heart’s pacemaker) to function poorly - or in her case, be slow on the uptake after she comes out of those fibrillation spells. This pacemaker will take over when that happens, so there’s no risk of those 3 second pauses anymore. However it will not stop her fibrillation. Instead, they upped the beta blocker medication she was on to try to decrease those occurrences - which they can do safely now that she has a pacemaker in there.
Here’s a picture of the EKG history when her heart stopped. First line is atrial fib, second is the 3 second pause, and then it goes back into sinus bradycardia (slightly slow heart rate with a normal rhythm).
