I certainly wasn’t expecting that . . .

Last Wednesday (6/7/23) I wasn’t feeling to good, so I took my blood pressure (BP) The cuff is right on the desk beside me. I put it on sufficiently tight and watched the numbers do their magic. Finally, the result showed up. My BP was OK. It was my pulse that was odd. 186 isn’t a number one expects for a pulse. I thought may be there was something wrong with the meter, so I waited for fifteen minutes and took it again. 188 came up. Another fifteen minutes and 190.

I called the consulting nurse at the VA. He said I needed to go to the emergency room. He asked where I lived. Considering I live half way to Leavenworth, he suggested I go to the hospital in Monroe. I asked if I should call 911 for an ambulance. He asked if I felt faint. I said, “no.” He said it was probably OK for me to drive myself, but he did say if I did feel faint on my way, to pull to the side of the road and call 911.

After pulling out on the highway, I saw a fire truck and aid car parked by the taco wagon at The Red Barn (an establishment that sells lots of odd stuff). The men and woman were waiting for their orders. I pulled into a parking stall and walked up to them and asked if they could check my BP. They’re always ready to check the BP for a citizen. Of course the BP was normal, but the pulse was. It wasn’t over 100, but they said I should go in since the VA nurse told me to. They said the VA nurse might have notified the emergency room to expect me.

I made it to the emergency room OK. After getting checked in, my vitals were checked by a nurse and she found me a room. A vein was tapped and the needle was taped to my arm. Then the leads from the heart monitor were taped across my hairy chest. I looked at it when they turned it on. My pulse was 192.

Then the questions began. Had this happened before? Did I have a history of heart disease? Any heart attacks? Strokes or TIAs? When did this begin? Had I noticed anything out of the ordinary before? I had woken up the night before with a heaviness on my chest, but didn’t do anything about it. I told them that when I checked my BP in the morning it and my pulse were OK.

The doctor came in and started asking his own set of questions, which were basically the same one asked by the nurses. He said that I had an atrial fibrillation or Afib. He said check with the on-call cardiologist on whether I should be admitted to the hospital or if it was OK for me to go home.

They gave me a med to lower my pulse. Then they hooked up an IV, which only turned on my kidneys. I lay there waiting for something to occur. They took me to the radiology section of the ER. I was given a CT scan on that came back clear. Some of my blood tests came back with questionable results, but the nurse that checked me out said the cardiologist would discuss those on my visit on the 16th.

So, now I have to be on the look out for symptoms of a stroke or another Afib. The only thing really bad about this was the knee replacement surgery I was supposed to have on the 21st. At our meeting on Friday, the Anesthesiologist said I would have to get clearance from a cardiologist before I can have surgery as serious as that. Oh, well, life goes on.