Just a little pericarditis...

Sporting a Holter Monitor

As I sit here on the couch feeling like an 80 year old I decided why not write about it. I'm hoping a lesson will be learned. It all started last about a week and a half ago with some heart palpitations. Now being that I work in the medical field and that I'm relatively young I brushed it off as stress or lack of sleep. Until it happened again the next day. This is when I told my hubby and as I suspected he says, "You should go have that check out." You see my immune system probably isn't the best around so its kind of a running joke that you might as well put a bullseye on my forehead cause if you got it I'm going to get it. But again I just brushed it off as stress or fatigue. The thought of a twenty something having something seriously wrong with her heart made me laugh. I should have known karma would come to get me the minute I semi-snorted. Then a few days later at work it happened. The dreaded chest pain along with the palpitations, ridiculously high pulse and high blood pressure. This landed me a one way ticket to the ER. Where they did all sorts of tests and dosed me up on pain meds in order to perform the tests. As I was sitting there (as laying down was just unbearable) I thought to myself you idiot first rule is never ignore chest pain! And then it hit me what if I really was having a heart attack? It sure felt like one!  My Grey's Anatomy look-a-like doctor, I swear he was the spitting image of Dr. Owen Hunt, assured me it wasn't a heart attack but that he needed to run some more tests just to make sure. So as we sat there waiting for the verdict all I could think of was geez I really do need that bullseye. I ended up having pericarditis which is a swelling of the sac that lines the heart. This landed me a one way ticket to rest for two weeks and the lovely fashion piece you see in the picture. One week of couch surfing down and another to go I'm grateful I wasn't having a heart attack and that the monitoring is over. I decided to share my story because I don't want other people ignoring their symptoms because they think nothing is wrong. It's always better to be safe than sorry. I count myself lucky that I did go get checked out and that what I have was caught in time to heal with rest, meds, and time.