So I just spent the last two days in the hospital. First hospital stay I've had since my diagnosis with diabetes ...
The day before yesterday I all of a sudden felt a wave of dizziness and my heart began to race really fast. I tested it with my home BP monitor and it was 191 so I had my dad drive me to the ER. There it was still 174 and they took me right back immediately (I have never skipped waiting at the ER and know that's never a good sign ...) and got me all hooked up to monitors and had several people sticking needles in me at once and people coming in to do an ECG and then I heard the doctor ask a nurse to get a crash cart. All this in the span of about 15 minutes from the time we arrived. And I'm lying there like OH MY GOD how serious is this?!?! So the doctor said my heart was going so fast at the moment (even faster than when I first came in, probably because they were freaking me out) that it was not in a normal rhythm and could just get tired and start to deteriorate at any time, and she was kind of surprised I had walked in and still had good blood pressure and wasn't feeling all that bad because a lot of people would literally be crashing ... So they had to stop it soon, and they were going to give me a drug that would basically stop the heart and reset it, but would make me feel like I was dying ...
Thankfully the people doing the IVs could not get one in my which caused a delay in giving me the drug (though resulted in about six needle pokes before they got one in a really uncomfortable spot), and in that ten minutes or so my heart slowed down to about 150 and it turned into a normal rhythm and so I didn't need this drug, and they stopped talking about how dangerous my heart rate was although did go on about all the serious things that could cause such an elevated heart rate. They thought maybe I was in DKA because my BG was quite high when they tested it, so pumped me full of IV fluids to rehydrate me in case I was DKA and/or dehydrated and tested for that; thought it could be sepsis or a severe infection so tested for that; a blood clot so got a chest x-ray; got another ECG done ... everything came back totally normal, even the ECG, other than the fast heart rate. After five hours my heart rate had dropped into the 120s, but the doctors were not comfortable sending me home with it that fast (resting) and not knowing the cause, so they admitted me.
I got transferred up to a cardiac unit where I spent 24 hours hooked to monitors. The doctors wanted to leave it overnight and see if it resolved on its own. They did try again to do some physical things that might help (like pressing on certain arteries, getting me to breathe and strain in certain ways, etc.), but they didn't help. They had tried them in the ER earlier and they hadn't made a difference there, either. For the first night they also kept an IV pump going with fluids in case that helped, though the doctor admitted flat-out that she didn't think it would, and it in fact made no difference.
My heart rate stayed around 120 when I was lying in bed and if I got up and moved around much at all it shot to over 150 and would set off all the monitor alarms. So I spent most of the time lying in bed trying to meditate and relax myself with books and music to see if that helped. Overnight was horrible because I didn't have a private room and I don't like sounds at night. And the bed was super uncomfortable so my back was killing me all night. And it is also impossible to sleep with your heart pounding as hard as it does when you're exercising. I had to listen to the other patients (a lot of whom couldn't sleep well, either), all the sounds the machines and equipment made, random alarms going off everywhere, nurses talking and coming and going ... The one time I was actually able to doze off lasted maybe an hour and then I was woken by my own alarms going off, which was a really loud blaring and flashing lights right near my head ... Apparently my heart rate decided to randomly jump to 150+ while I slept. A nurse came in to make sure I was okay, and she left, and I lay back down to try and go back to sleep, and it happened again. So after that, I couldn't sleep because I was worried my heart rhythm might go all out of whack again while I slept.
In the morning my heart rate had not improved at all, and I still could not exert myself at all without setting off alarms (and feeling terrible), so the doctor gave me a beta-blocker to slow down my heart. It worked like a charm and within a few hours my heart rate was totally normal. I had a few more tests to check for heart defects and a sinus infection (because I had complained to them about it and they thought maybe I could have a hidden one), and again both came back perfect. So I was discharged with a week's prescription for the medication and a, "Well, we don't really know, but this happens sometimes in otherwise completely healthy people ... Your heart just started getting a signal originating from somewhere else and wasn't able to flip itself out of it."
So now I have this mysterious heart issue that I don't have any answers for. The one good thing, though, is that I have a ream of perfect bloodwork and heart tests and know I for sure do not have any heart defects, beginnings of heart disease, electrolyte imbalances, hormone imbalances, and so on. I do have a follow-up appointment in a week with an internal medicine doctor from the hospital, but I doubt he will have any more answers than they did in the hospital. In fact, now I'm even more confused because the testing they did showed I have no infections at all, which makes me now wonder why my blood sugars have been so high. I looked back in old journal entries and this is not the first time in the past few years that I've had a high resting heart rate, although I've never had it to the point where I felt dizzy like I did this time. I also did some googling (never really a good thing, but I couldn't help it) and there is one condition that I think sounds very likely that is most common for women in their 20s and 30s. They don't know what causes it but speculations are that a) it's a type of autonomic neuropathy (not related to diabetes, though I suppose in my case it could be), b) that the body is hypersensitive to normal adrenaline production (which would make a LOT of sense because that would also explain my blood sugar issues as of late), or c) that there is some problem with the electrical signals in the heart itself. One site even said there is recent evidence that there are types of autoantibodies against parts of the heart detected, meaning it could even be an autoimmune condition. I may ask the doctor and/or cardiologist (if I'm referred to one, which is likely) about it, but mostly I want to know how to prevent it from happening again.
Over the next week I'm supposed to just keep taking this medication, and call the doctor if I feel my heart racing again, unless it's racing so fast it's making me feel dizzy again in which case I head to the ER.
So that is basically my not-so-fun adventure of the past few days and yet another thing to add to my already very long health history ...