The week started off innocently enough.
I went out to dinner with my skank-whore friends to one of my favorite cheesecake-themed restaurant. I ate too much, took stupid pictures, and scared a cute waiter boy into being gay. Pretty much a normal night out with the teacher-friends.
I woke up Monday to my credit card number being hacked by some jackhole on the internet. I spent the morning begging asking for monies from my mama to cover me while I figured out the logistics of paying for stuff and closing out the card. The perfect Monday, I’d say!
Tuesday was normal-ish, until I realized that my heart had been going pitter-patter since the night before and not for any good reason like Edward swooping me off to the woods to make out. I’ve felt the flutter and strong heart-beat before, but not for this long and not coupled with dizziness. So, like any paranoid idiot trying to prove she’s not a hypochondriac, I didn’t say anything. Until I did when I mentioned it in passing to my personal wet nurse, Aunt Becky.
She, of course, went ape-shit and told me to call my doctor right away. Me being the eternal optimist, refused because THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME! WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?!?
Then she threatened me with hot pokers to my eyeballs over the internets, so I called my doctor. Mind you, this was 5 minutes before I needed to leave to be only 2 minutes late to pick up my girls from summer camp. The doctor says “OH, YOU’RE A LOSER AND WE CAN’T SEE YOU UNTIL TOMORROW, NERD! Go in to the urgent care clinic, asshole.” Or something like that.
We’re lucky enough to have an urgent care clinic that will notify me when the doctor is ready to see me (SCORE!), so they called me when I was in the car on my way to them anyway after I got the girls. The nurse on the phone freaked the FUCK OUT when I mentioned anything heart-related, so she said her doctor is telling me to go straight to the regular ER.
“But I don’t waaannnaaaa…” I really said that to her. I’m a grown up, I swears.
So, with my girls begging for ponies or some shit, I drove to the nearest hospital with my wonky-feeling heart, and thanks be to the wee baby Jeebus, they saw me within 5 minutes of us arriving.
Something about “heart attack” and “arrhythmia” or other life-threatening terms were being thrown around while I’m all, “I’m sure it’s nothing. I can be going home now, yes?”
I was starting to think I wasn’t a hypochondriac after all. Hooray! Also, wait… that means…
The nurse asked if someone could come get my girls. Because THAT’S always a fun call to make to your husband: “Oh, by the way, I’m in the ER and you need to come rescue your children from the bleeding and the heart monitors and the urgent care happening around here. kthxbai.”
I kind of got alarmed when the one nurse whispered something to the other nurse when she showed her my EKG results. Whispering when you’re in a medical crisis is never a good thing.
Long story short, I was admitted for observation and tests to make sure I wasn’t having a heart attack (I wasn’t) and to try to figure out what was the cause (never happened). We figured I’d only be there for one night, but because of an asshole cardiologist who didn’t want to take his sweet time looking at my echocardiogram results (that, by the way, I was awoken at 3 IN THE FRUCKING MORNING TO GO HAVE DONE), he booked me for a second night of hospital bed vacation.
The outcome? After 48 hours in the hospital that included a moaning patient roaming the halls being coaxed by a kazoo at 7am, I have no actual diagnosis and no plan of figuring out what the crap is wrong with me. I’m still having the same symptoms as what put me in the hospital, but since Dr. Cardio-Asshole only spend 2-1/2 minutes with me during my 48-hour stay, I have no concrete direction for how to help myself.
I do however, at the behest of my on-call doctor at the hospital, have a new cardiologist I’m scheduled to see on Wednesday. I hope to get more of an answer than the “it’s not diagnosable, it’s “just” an irregular heartbeat, you won’t pass out” information Dr. Cardio-Asshole gave me.
Until then, I’m laying low and feeling wonky, but that’s typical me.
OR, you can just think of my fluttering heart beating irregularly for you (yes, YOU, not THEM… YOU).



























