Through my entire life I’ve enjoy a good health. I was never victim of any disease or medical procedure, but sadly all that changed a year ago. I started to suffer from palpitations or like everybody called it “tachycardia”. My tachycardias were the most annoying thing that can happen to a person, it did not have a specific time to start, you can be running, watching TV or in the worse scenario sleeping. Also, the duration of the palpitations was every time greater and the easiest way to describe it is to accelerate a car up to 8000 revolutions per second until the engine begins to shake. After suffering from one of them I always felt like I’ve ran a marathon in five minutes without even move from my sofa. When I finally went to the doctor he did several examinations to my chest to detect what the problem was, which included ultrasounds and electrocardiograms. By that time I was calmed, until the doctor called to announce what was going on with me. I suffered from (name of the procedure) which in English means that I had more nerves in my heart than what I needed and every time I had a nervous reaction those nerves reacted with each other like two cables doing short-circuit. The solution was simple but terrifying, the doctor would have to operate through my neck to cut one of the nerves in a surgery that would last 3 hours. When he said what he was going to do to me I instantly said -let’s do it!, but inside of my head I only wanted to scream.
Time went faster than the expected and in a blink of an eye there was December 4th, the day of my sentence. I woke up early like any other day; I dressed up and did not have any breakfast that morning. Like at 9:30am I was on my way to the Children’s Hospital with my parents where my doctor...
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... hour I was devouring a large Domino’s pepperoni pizza as if I had not eaten in a hundred years. Finally the worse had passed and everybody went home by 7:30 except my mom that was staying with me that night in the hospital.
After all December 4th was not a horrible day. I learned that nobody should be scared of something new because I actually had fun the day of my surgery. When I returned to school two days later everybody wanted to know how I was feeling and what happened to the mysterious creature that accompanied me when I woke up. Because of this I considering myself a lucky person after that day, not only because of the love and affection that my family and friends showed me but also because I’m sure that I’m one of the few people in this planet that have actually seen a dragon. That day was one of the best experiences of my life and I would never forget it.
The day started off like any average day, I took a hot shower, got dressed and got prepared for the day. It wasn’t until I sat down and started eating my bowl full of cheerios with extra sugar, that I realized what was actually happening. Today would be the day I finally bought my first car, after a year of hard work and conservative economic decisions.
It was a bone-chilling winter morning in Bavaria. My alarm clock rang, and I slapped it to snooze. Oh no, I was not getting up that day. I had just finished the worst school week of my life. If we zoom back to that time two years ago, I was a 14 year old foreign exchange student in southern Germany.
.... I was relieved when the clock struck 2:00 and I was able to go home for the rest of the summer. Looking back, I regret leaving that hospital. It was, by far, one of the best experiences in my life.
I had just finished facing my fears watching the metallic needle slip so seamlessly under my skin into the veins of my nervous, clammy hand. Hugging my Mom like it could have been the last time I saw her, seeing my dad's face stern and worried. I wheeled down the hall into this operating room, white was all I saw, a bed in the middle for the surgery to go down. As I lay on the bed waiting to be put under I remember seeing the blue masks of the people to be operating on me, I had to put all my trust in them, trusting someone you seen for less than 5 seconds with your life. Absolutely terrifying. The nurse slipping the fluid into my IV as I lay on my back looking up at the white ceiling, this cold sensations rushed over me. Then suddenly, I was out.
Although in many occasion of heart palpitation, there can be sign of a serious, chronic underlying problem which may be like:
Around the age of 5, going to doctor appointments was a normal occurrence . I would even look forward to it, spending time with my mom. I will always cherish those times that I spent with her. Those appointments eventually lead up to the surgery that would change everything. During that surgery, the doctor had created a hole in the mesentery lining, tissue that connects organs to the wall of the abdomen. This hole eventually became larger causing many organs to fail. We brought my mom into the ER where she was brought into surgery. This would be the first time my mom would die.
My leg bounced wildly. I had every nail on my hand bit down until they were almost bleeding. I had drank three Pepsi's and eaten two candy bars just for something to do, and we had only been waiting an hour. Sixty minutes of pure torture, not knowing what was wrong with my baby brother or if he was going to be okay.
treinta y tres años de una cardiopatía de tipo reumático cuando yo tenía cinco” (70).
The most important and influential discovery was the practice of surgery. With this invention, human life became more sophisticated, humans lived longer, and we obtained a knowledge of ourselves sufficient enough to break the boundaries built by ignorance. Lacking prescription drugs, accurate tools, computer technology, and any background experience to build from, our ancestors struggled to learn how to repair the human body. They did an suprisingly competent job of treating the sick and injured. Some of the medical technology developed in ancient times surpassed anything available in the modern world until the 18th century or 19th century. In eras wherein religious views took precedence over medicine and logic, surgical advancement was difficult. The knowledge we have now was obtained from these people's exploits.
The car was hot and stuffy when I slipped back into the driver's seat. I found the most depressing music I owned and drove out of Glenwood as the sun started to set. Two more hours until I was home, two more hours of thinking what a terrible day I had gone through, and two more hours of cussing myself for being so naïve. The drive was a long one.
Have you ever had a moment in time that seems like minutes or hours even though it was only a few seconds? Have you ever seen everything before you play out in slow motion, where you are aware of everything around you, yet not knowing what was going on? I have, and as I look back on it, I feel very blessed and protected. On December 22, 01, I decided to take a little swim in our swimming pool and almost drowned. I still can remember it like yesterday. This incident almost cost me my life,
Right there and then I felt what it was like to have state anxiety. The fear of not performing again was petrifying. So needing more answers I took my news and went to doctor who had more knowledge about my situation. Reaching out to DuPont hoping to get clarity, they just agreed with my last doctor and on top of it they wanted to mediate me. With this medication it would thin my blood and I would have greater chances of passing out. I couldn’t agree with them, I begged my mom to take me somewhere else. I couldn’t handle the stress of the medication on my body. Then later that month we took the news from DuPont and ended up at Johns Hopkins. They specialized with kids who had heart problems and analyzed the diagnosis with a different approach. They thought it was rare that at such a young age I would be experiencing this dramatic of a heart defect. From there they started doing genetic testing to see if they could pin point anything that could cause this defect. After 6 months of research and genetic testing I got a call back from my doctor to come in and discuss their findings. I was diagnosed with Marfans Syndrome
It was a day of eager anticipation. It was a day of last-minute planning. It was the day before my fourteenth birthday. I had been looking forward to the party for at least two months. Everything was accounted for: balloons, Super Soakers, and music. There would be a barbeque of magnificent proportions. Miraculously, everyone had read the RSVP deadline and called in a week ahead of schedule. An enormous ice cream cake was to be delivered with eight large pepperoni pizzas. Needless to say, I was excited. It was to be my first party at our new house. I helped cook the enormous array of snack foods. I eventually surrendered to the temptation and stole a few strips of marinated steak when my mom wasn't looking. I had gone to bed that night with dreams of family, friends, and possibly a new stereo system.
When time jumped like lighting, so did we, not to our feet but towards each other. We held one another even tighter and didn't want to let go. Although, time was spent wisely and carefully saved, we had run out and were rushed like an ambulance to meet the schedule appointed in half an hour. In sweet bitterness, we packed up and went home. An everlasting day at Lake Lavon that is perpetual in my heart will remain there forever.
There were a lot of patients that came into the emergency room on Friday November 20, 2015 that had heart problems. The first patient I observed was only thirty and she had been having tachycardia since two o’clock Thursday afternoon. She stated that she has had this problem before but it never lasted this long. She was said to have SVT prior to arriving to the emergency room by the ambulance crew. Upon arriving in the ER her heartrate got up to 220 beats per minutes. The next patient that I saw was brought in because his wife said that he was shaking more than usual, he had Parkinson’s. There was a young lady that came in who had hit her head almost three weeks ago and was diagnosed with a concussion at that time. She was now having neck and head pain and numbness in the back of her head. There was another assumed SVT patient. Her heartrate was around 170. There was also a homeless man that was brought in complaining of pain all over and all he kept asking for was morphine