Knock, knock. I wish this were a joke, but I have no quippy response to this particular rapping.
On or around April Fool’s Day (how apropos, in retrospect) my heart began doing summersaults for five or six hours at a time, usually late in the day, usually when I surrendered to the couch. The feeling was so pronounced and persistent that I could feel my back bounce slightly on the sofa cushion behind me. So strong that I felt certain an observer could see it rippling through the skin of my chest, like you can see a baby’s movement in utero through the maternity clothes of a very pregnant woman.
It amused me initially. “Oh, hi,” I thought, addressing my cardiac muscle directly. “You’re there; I feel you.” But as it persevered, I perseverated. I began to feel like an extra in yet another Alien sequel. My heart wanted to escape my body.
“Don’t google it. Don’t google it. Don’t google it,” I implored myself by about the third day. And, of course, I googled it.
“Don’t worry,” said Dr. Google. Easy for you to say, I thought as my heart did Cirque du Soleil acrobatics. The good Dr. Internet advised me that while alarming (ya think?), such internal cardiac gymnastics are almost always harmless and result from an excess of stress, caffeine, exercise, or several other mundane causes. Let’s see: anxiety is my constant companion, I drink an inordinate number of cups of PG Tips tea and exercise daily. But this has been true for years, and my heart has behaved until the onset of this curious activity.
“Relax,” I told myself. And followed up with practicing all the calming techniques that I teach my students. And still, she persisted. The theme song from Mel Brooks’s 1977 film High Anxiety burrowed into my brain. I feared Nurse Diesel (deliciously portrayed by Cloris Leachman) might come to drag me away to the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous.
—
“Call the doctor,” said my sister.
“Go see the doctor,” advised a good friend and fellow Anxiety Club member.
My particular flavor of anxiety becomes even more pronounced when health issues arise. This created dueling, simultaneous problems: the concern over my restless heart, and the ball of snow careening down the steep Alpine slope gathering sharp shards of ice that is my anxiety. I called my doctor.
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“There she is! I read your book! She wrote a book!” My doctor was delighted to see me in the waiting room and extolled my achievement to the staff and other patients. I felt embarrassed but somehow special; mostly I just wanted to get into an examination room and have him tell me everything was ok.
The physician’s-assistant-in-training dutifully took my vitals and registered my complaint. Normally appreciative of PAs, that day I wanted her to go away. I felt neither like serving as her guinea pig, nor making small talk. I wanted my doctor.
“So, Diane, what’s going on with you today?” Finally. I shared the now five-day-long saga with him, concluding with my self-diagnosis. “I think my heart is fine,” (wishful thinking) “I think I’m just in a very bad anxiety loop that I need to get out of.”
Due diligence done, he said the words I longed to hear: “You’re fine, Diane. If you need to take a Xanax to nip this in the bud, go ahead.” He knew I eschewed all medications and would be reluctant to do so. He looked me in the eye. “Diane, you are fine. You don’t have AFib.” Oh how I wished he’d stopped at that first phrase. I went away mostly reassured, and shared the good news with friends and family, but wondered how he knew with such certainty that I didn’t have AFib.
Here’s the thing about anxiety. It is sneaky. It is insidious. It is pushy. It will insert itself with authority into a door left even slightly ajar. And it will wreak havoc like a pair of starving, rabid racoons that have broken into a fully-stocked forest cabin. It hijacks my brain and adamantly pushes out any rational or other thoughts besides on that which it wishes to focus. It is Stewie in season five, episode one, of Family Guy: “Mom, Mom, Mommy, Mommy, Mama, Mama, Ma, Ma, Mum, Mum, Mummy, Mummy.” But instead it says: “How do I feel now? And now? What if I have heart disease? I hope I don’t have heart disease. How does he know I don’t have AFib? What even is AFib? Do people die from Afib?...” I feel slightly tingly, my stomach roils, and have a hard time focusing on anything besides the worry. No one knows this because they cannot see the anxiety takeover. If I had a cast or cane, people might give me a wide berth or some sympathy. But it’s even more unnerving to try to act “normal” when my circuitry overloads thus.
I barely made it through the book group I facilitated the next day, and was so immensely uncomfortable that I caved and very reluctantly took a Xanax. It did help, and the wild heart gyrations abated a bit, which gave me some relief but also false hope that I’d nipped the problem in the bud.
The coronary tumbling resumed the next day, plunging me further into frustration. I swirled, Tasmanian Devil-like, in a dustball of discomfort for days, no matter how hard I tried (yoga, meditation, Rescue Remedy, etc.) to settle my heart and myself down. Friends and family checked in and offered empathy, support, and sometimes advice. I know they’re well meaning, but I instinctively cringe when someone starts a sentence with “You should just…” I have just done everything I know to do at this point.
I texted my sister, whose good friend’s husband is a cardiologist. Now over two weeks into the odyssey, I asked her, “should I go see him?” And she texted him and he texted me and I had an appointment two days hence. The scenario resembled that of the one in my GP’s office, with a more thorough exam, including an EKG, and him listening to my heart in ways I didn’t even know were possible. “I think you are fine. I can’t say 100% unless we record the rhythm when it occurs.” And he described a portable heart monitor I could buy on Amazon for $80 that would assess the issue when it happened in real time. Modern technology, I thought. I asked him if he were worried. “No,” he said assuredly. I asked him if it were his wife if he’d make her get the Kardia gadget right away. “No, but if it persists, I would.”
I went away mostly reassured, and shared the good news with friends and family, but wondered how far away from 100% certainty he fell.
One might think I’d have ordered up the KardiaMobile EKG monitor immediately, but I’d hoped the additional reassurance from someone whose business is hearts would calm mine enough. And frankly, a little part of me wanted to keep my head in the sand and just not know.
The torment persisted and wore me down. After about three weeks of this alarming phenomenon (as that same friend said, if my spleen had decided to flip-flop for five hours a day I’d be none the wiser; the heart gyrations were impossible to ignore), I gave in and asked Jeff Bezos to send me the smaller-than-a-business-card device. Stat.
Its arrival made me nervous. What if? What if? What if? Look, I am supremely aware that we are all going to go sometimes. But a relatively-young-feeling 64, I’m just not ready to go, or to deal with a potentially life threatening coronary issue. I was scared. Plain scared. I circled around the box for a while, aware of but avoiding it like my college roommate and I used to do with our loudly red calculus textbooks. I’ll just open it and read the directions, I conceded. I’ll just download the required app, I decided. I’ll just put the 1 ½ x 4 inch sensor on the coffee table in case I want to use it when the calisthenics kicked in. And, like clockwork, they did.
I opened the app. “Place two fingers on each sensor,” it coaxed me, this medical siren. I obeyed. “Leave them there for thirty seconds.” I closed my eyes and counted, not wanting to watch the machine do its thing. When I opened my eyes, KardiaMonitor told me: “No abnormalities detected in your EKG.” I breathed as deeply as I had in weeks, and sent a screenshot of the good news to the cardiologist for his file. “Hey, that’s great!” he said, with a thumbs up emoji.
“And just like that… he is gone,” says Kevin Spacey as Verbal Kint of the devil at the conclusion of the 1995 The Usual Suspects. And indeed, just like that, my personal demon was gone. The knowledge that my heart was, in fact and irrefutably ok, popped the balloon of anxiety and deflated it; it poured water on the Wicked Witch of the West and melted her; it drove a stake through Dracula’s heart and slayed him. You get it.
I felt such immense and overwhelming relief and gratitude that even my “normal” level of persistent anxiety abated. The sun shone brighter, the sky seemed bluer, the birds chirped more cheerfully. And after nearly a month, I relaxed. And reflected.
I wouldn’t, as they say, wish this albeit ultimately innocuous event, on anyone. It traumatized me such that my anxiety levels rose to a level they’ve not seen in nearly a decade. It felt immense discomfort wondering when and if it would ebb - the lack of control and uncertainty are the two strongest weapons in anxiety’s arsenal. I feel proud that handled this episode better than the ones in previous decades. The coping tools I’ve learned and practiced served me well. The depth of disturbance, though, and the ability of my brain to so impact my body have left me reeling and reconnoitering my internal landscape. Ultimately, I appreciate my heart even more. The anxiety must have been building so steadily and precipitously (and there is not always an obvious cause/effect) that my heart took it upon itself to sound the alarm to make me sit up and pay attention not only to it, but to my state of mind as well.
Since then it’s fluttered flirtatiously every now and then. And when it does, I pause, acknowledge it: “Oh hi, you’re there; I feel you.” And thank it again for looking out for me.
Another extremely well-expressed post - of course! Good that you bought the device which will give you peace of mind ( as far as that is possible), if and when symptoms re-occur.