Heart Troubles

A lot has been going on in my life over the last few weeks that I need to share. One big thing that has been front and center is my heart. Two weeks ago, Saturday night around 1:30-2:00 am, my heart decided that it would be a great time to just go. So it did. It beat for hours...all night...then all the next day..and the next day, and the next day. I thought it was going to jump right out of my chest. This just wore me out, saturday night to tuesday afternoon, non stop. 

This heart marathon beat me down, it frustrated me, it made me so tired, and along with it came an adrenaline rush. You know what you can't do during an adrenaline rush? Sleep. You know what I didn't do much of during this time? Sleep. On Monday I picked up a bottle of Calm magnesium to take because I know magnesium has helped me with some of these issues in the past. Sometime tuesday afternoon this heart ordeal began calming down, then wednesday was a good day(maybe even mildly fantastic). Thursday, also a good day. Friday, surprise again-good day. Then comes Saturday night, boom, back to a heart marathon. No idea what caused it either night. I never stopped with the magnesium.

The next morning, sunday in church, was terrible. I was just out of it...the morning started out okay but the longer that I was awake the less I felt like being upright. 

So since these events I have been loading on magnesium with some success. I also started doing a drop of frankincense and lemon oil in my water bottle once a day and I drink this throughout the day. Between the magnesium and the oils, I have found a little bit of relief and stability. The oils seem to have calmed down my brain and made me more alert, which in turn may also be calming the adrenaline surges. The mag has no doubt made me more relaxed, I must say this has been a nice relief.

I do not know what suddenly set this off. It just came up and never totally disappeared.

I spoke to one of the doctors I work for. He's a big fitbit fan like I am, so he asked me for the readouts of my heart rate according to my fitbit. He looked at it and say my average/resting beats per minute is much higher than it should be especially for my age. He looked at me and said something along the lines of-I am twice your age, overweight, too busy to take care of myself, and I don't eat the best diet and my heart rate is way better than yours.

When he put it in that perspective I was like oh...maybe this has been an issue longer than I thought. He told me his resting heart rate stays in the upper 50's to mid 60's. Mine is at upper 60's to low 70's, with periodic spikes around 115 bpm or more.

Even before the sudden heart racing my resting bpm was mid 60's, with a few mild spikes up into the 100's.

I do not know what I need to do now...last time I had IV meds my heart symptoms improved significantly for a few weeks. That was about a month ago, I guess its about time to consider doing another round. My IV's consist of magnesium, B's, C, and Sodium Bicarbonate. 

I just honestly do not want to go back to the doctor to just sit in a chair, freezing, for however long it takes for the bags to drip into me. I just don't. I like how I feel the day after the infusions, usually I feel better across the board. I just do not want to keep doing that.

I had enjoyed my hiatus from the IV pole. 

I must add something else. Its not just my heart physically thats causing me issues, emotionally I have a lot running through me. A lot of memories from when I first got sick have been coming back as well as thinking about how my friend group has changed over the years. Looking back there are a lot of things I miss about my friends. When I first became sick I, like most lyme people, lost communication with some friends. I wasn't any longer in sight of my friends all the time, because I was spending more time at home in bed. I knew that people my age did not understand what being chronically ill meant. I tried to be understanding by reasoning with myself that they just did not understand what being sick meant and that they just had other things to do.

Well, now that I am older and going through round two of a long time down swing in health, I am discovering that the people I know have not changed, even the people I know now that I did not know then are they same. If I am not front and center to their attention I kinda get pushed to the wayside. Now that I and my friends are older, they just have different excuses for being busy or not responding to text messages.

Today I had an appointment with the massage therapist at work for her to work on my abdominal muscles. The muscles around my stomach are super tight causing me issues with eating.

In reality though, I just had that appointment to have someone to talk to who actually knows me. After the appointment she asked if the massage had helped my stomach, I said it doesn't feel much different and she agreed. I think it would be safe to say that my stomach is where I store my stress these days.

On another note, I told one of my school friends about lyme disease today. I am not close to anyone really at school. I have friends and we have small group that sticks together, but really only at school. I do not share much of my personal life with them, being sick is one of the most personal aspects of my life, so I do not tell just anyone and everyone. 

Before today only one other friend of mine at school knew I was sick.

The conversation went well. She was talking to me about this new healthy diet she was trying so I asked why she was doing it, her response was so that she could start trying to form better dietary habits. I told her I avoid sugar, wheat, and dairy. Naturally she asked why would I do that, so I explained my health situation. 

I was surprised at how understanding she was and that she actually asked me questions about my illness. Usually people kinda brush it off and try to move on, politely of course. Turns out her mom has MS, so she understands some of the basic chronic illness things and has heard of lyme disease before. She thought it was easily treatable, I explained to her how its only easy in the beginning. 

All in all, I liked talking to her about all of this briefly, it is not often I get to reach outside of the bubble of myself to talk about these health struggles. It makes the whole chronic illness deal rather lonely and sad.

Today has been a long day, its now after 2:00 am and I am still wide awake...after a day of school, work, homework, and a sleeping pill I would like to sleep. Unfortunately, it just is not happening tonight. I have no idea what I have done to my brain, but relaxing to sleep at night is becoming more of a rarity than normal.....