Herself speaks.
It only took five and a half months from the initial episode of Good Lord What Was That, to a tentative diagnosis:
Inappropriate sinus tachycardia.
It was a long road, with a thorough set of diagnostics to rule other things out: EKG, bloodwork, echocardiogram, sleep study, Holter monitoring. Step by step. I didn't want to talk about it or write about it, because I didn't know what it was and it was so very far out of my research/scientific understanding, that I couldn't begin to guess.
I had reached the point where I was not particularly optimistic that anyone would be able to tell me what was happening. Not the first time I've experienced something that no one could validate, I thought wryly. Because when one is a middle-aged, slightly overweight woman, the medical establishment is much more likely to dismiss things as stress. Or being overweight.
Finally, a referral from the cardiologist to an arrhythmia specialist -- who finally gave it a name.
What now? We're trying low-dose medication. I'm cautiously optimistic for the first time in a long time that there will come a morning when I don't wake up in the wee hours because of that alarming fluttering/rattling sensation deep down inside. It's not life-threatening, just a tremendous annoyance.
I'm glad it's not life-threatening. There are a lot of people counting on me to be here. And I have so much to do, yet.
The name itself -- inappropriate sinus tachycardia -- seems just so fitting. The heart behaving inappropriately. It's the plot summary of a medical-based twenty-first century romance novel.
We shall see how it goes.
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