The Sew Happy Stitcher: May 2019

I'll start with the "eh" news and build up to the good stuff. I got the results of the Holter monitor recently. The official diagnosis is "intermittent tachycardia w/ occasional PACs and PVCs." In English, what that means is that my heart occasionally likes to beat faster than the situation warrants. The PACs are like extra little complete heartbeats thrown in there for good measure. The PVCs means that the ventricles (lower and larger two parts of the heart) are beating prematurely without my atrium really getting to beat first (humor my nerdiness for a moment; without going into valves, during the first part pf a heartbeat, the atria and ventricles relax and fill with blood passively. Then, both of the atria pump to force even more blood into the ventricles. This helps the ventricles pump better due to their elasticity. Basically, they are like rubber bands; the more they are stretched (like when they are filled w/ additional blood), the more forceful they can contract (the more the rubber band snaps).) Basically, my ventricles get impatient and like to jump the gun a bit.

Here's an example of a normal heart beat (Normal sinus rhythm NSR):

https://litfl.com/normal-sinus-rhythm-ecg-library/

The different look to the heartbeats is just the electrical activity in different parts of the heart.

This one shows a couple of PACs. The underlying rhythm is normal:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/afibemory.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/premature-atrial-contractions-pacs-and-atrial-fibrillation/amp/

This is a NSR w/ a PVC. If multiple PVCs are present, they may look alike or different. If they look alike, the same part of the ventricle is instigating it. If some or all of them are different from each other, different parts of the ventricle is instigating the beat.

https://ecg-educator.blogspot.com/2016/11/premature-ventricuar-contraction-pvc.html?m=1

Sorry, that was more nerdiness than I intended to impart. So far, it looks like stress and lack of sleep, or enough sleep, tends to trigger it in me. Which means my job is not my friend right now. Especially since there are some issues again.

So, I have felt for some time now that God has been nudging me to go back to school. I think He is using this to convince me to consider things I wouldn't have otherwise, at least not at this point in my life. Right now, I am very seriously looking into a paramedic to RN bridge program. Once i get some experience, I plan on going for nurse practitioner (I'll have to get my Bachelor's first as well.). I'm hoping shorter shifts will help with the tachycardia. It just became a \n issue 1-2 years ago. It worsened several months ago. The Dr. I was seeing at that time did not want to look into the cause, she just wanted to throw pills at me, which I was not willing to do. The nurse practitioner I see now is very thorough. At this point, she is wanting me to keep an eye on it and let her know of any changes or worsening. And to pay attention to what might be triggering it. Bloodwork was good, so I really think that it is stress related. Which is why changing my primary career (Lord willing, I plan on still working part time as a paramedic.) might just help. At least I'm hoping it will!

In other news, Sadie got spayed recently. She was still a bit drugged in this picture: