All of a sudden

It has been nearly a week since I've slept through the night.

12:30am 4/4/09
I wake to nothing; no sound brings me out of slumber. Dreams are light and benign, barely resonating as I am brought out of sleep. I wake. My heart is posed and ready to go. It is not beating fast yet, but I can feel adrenaline floating in my blood, waiting for the moment I stir. I'll roll over, or sit up and my heart starts to pound, really pound. I have no idea how fast it is going, but it shows little signs of slowing. The shaking starts in my legs, and then spreads to my whole body. "Nothing is wrong with you." I tell myself. My body, my mind seems unconvinced.

What could this be?

Friday morning I went to the ED for the first time since I got stitches in the 6th grade. I was told to go by my mother, who consulted a cardiologist about my symptoms. So, upon waking at 7am with the same presentation as tonight, I left Tara asleep, and, all nervous stumble, I put on clothes and drove to the ED. It is painfully close, this ED, no more than a 1/2 mile away.

I was a patient in the ED from 7:30am until about 1:30pm on Friday. Tara had slept lowsely and had her phone on vibrate. I didn't get a hold of her until 9:45. She appeared at my bed side 15 minutes later.

The Physician's Assistant who attended to me was a man in his early 30s with curly brown hair and square, hip glasses. I calmly explained what had been happening over the past week. I told that I had been wake in the night, up to three times, with extremely high heart rate, this got worse if I moved around. I was unable to calm myself. The high heart rate subsided after 10 minutes or more.

A cardiology fellow came in to see me and listened to my heart. Not more than 30 seconds in, he told me I had a murmur. This was no new. Since I was a child, various health care works would
pick it up, but the vast majority that listen to my heart never do.

I had blood work, an echocadiogram and EKG. All of them were find. They sent me home with a halter monitor, which I was to wear for 24 hours and keep a diary of my activities.

And so I did. Yesterday at 5:30am I had a similar event from which I recovered from pretty quickly.

Yesterday afternoon I napped, and woke with mild symptoms of the same nature. But this evening... this was the worst thus far. I woke. It began. I took 0.5 mg of lorazapram, which was prescribed to me for purposes of quelling anxiety. That did little to came me down.

Why is this happening? What can't I calm down? What if something is really wrong this time? How could I know with the gusting winds of andernaline and the pounding of my heart creating ill-definable symptoms. Was I bleeding? Why would I do that tonight, rather than all the other nights I'd done this. Just the prospect of this happening made my anxiousness build. More warm floods of adrenaline in my stomach and back. My heart increased its pounding. I can't move, for it makes it worse. I'm not dressed or I would run out side and shiver against the rainy cold morning to ward this off. I just can't think about it. I try, but my mind turns to the worst. The though that I could miss my chance to get help for my symptoms and in a few moments I would be beyond saving.

Saving. I have always thought I would need saving for some reason. I would have a medical emergancy and would need a team of 5 people to keep me in this world. What do I do or fear that would result in such a grim medical senario? Car accident? Bike accident? No. Just a spontaneous bleed. That has always be a source of anxiety.

There is something about dying suddenly, without purpose or farewells, that I find extremely troubling. Why think about it? What will worrying do? I'm not sure. I've always worried as a way to occupy my mind and try to make sense of my world. Death is the one thing you can worry about, worry all the day long, and you will never solve it. You'll try to reason with it, but you cannot. It just is. It is as if I could worry about the sun coming up today to the point where it would not. No amont of my obscessing over my health and rare spontaeous vascular problems is going to pardon me from my morality. It is coming. So why fear it?

But I do. I need sleep