Back in 2009 is when this unusual heart problem got the best of me. When I found out more about it the doctor had said it's something that people are born with, however there was no way to detect it. I remember when it started happening. I was about 16 years old maybe. Every once in a great while I would get light-headed and confused for a few minutes. Sometimes it was hard to see due to blurry vision while it would happen. Each episode would only last for a few minutes or so. My heart would beat very rapidly every so often as well. For the longest time I didn't think much of it. I also thought that if I had mentioned to my parents the symptoms I was experiencing they would assume I was using drugs. I would drink every once in a great while, but at 16 I was not bad at all. I was pretty healthy (as far as I knew). One night I had two of my best friends over. It started happening to me late at night, and at first it was nothing new to me. Then I realized it was not going away. As it continued to happen, the symptoms I normally have kept getting worse. Eventually I could feel my heart pounding terribly, started sweating, lost my vision, walked to the bathroom half blind, and then could not stop puking once I made it to the toilet. When I finally felt a little better although my heart was still pounding I had walked back to my bedroom. My two friends were kind of looking at me seriously concerned, however I still thought I would be ok (go figure). One of the friends I had over had went into my mother's room around 1AM insisting I go to the emergency room. My mom even said that I would be ok, and that it was probably something stupid. When my friend came back into my room I continued to talk to him about my problem as it was only getting worse. He finally freaked out on me, convinced me to get in the car, and go to the E.R. When I had gotten to the E.R they had gotten me in immediately. In the article there was a different number because the original number was not recorded since I was transferred to a different hospital. My original heart beat was 266 BPM (beats per minute). The hospital was very shocked at how high this was. They had to keep shooting a drug into my I.V called meteperolol or something like that. This drug is used specifically to drop someone's heart rate. The doctor I had dealt with at my community hospital was a complete dick. When he had first seen me he assumed I was using drugs (cocaine specifically) I think he said. Around this time in my life I had never even tried cocaine before. I was very angered cause he did not believe me when I told him I did not do drugs. He had told me I was in denial, and probably just hiding it from them. After they gave me a urine test, and a blood test they had found no drugs in my system. The doctor finally believed me and it was funny by the time he looked so dumb founded. The doctor then insisted he did not know what was wrong with me, and that I was being transferred to a different hospital. The next hospital I went to was about a half hour away although that ambulance ride felt like t was about ten minutes long. I was really out of it. By the time they had figured out what the problem was I was released from the hospital the next day with a script for meteperolol or whatever it was called. I was scheduled for surgery at that same hospital in two weeks. I had to take a lot of those meds before my scheduled surgery to keep my condition under control. My surgery went very well, and I have not had problems with it yet. The doctor did inform me that there was another circuit that could cause a problem later on again in my life (so far it hasn't). He told me he was not going to remove that one because it was not the source of the problem. He said he would only have it removed later on in life it were to become a problem. This was because it was too close to a main circuit and he did not want any mistakes during the surgery. Anyway, I'm so excited I was able to find the article they had written about me. They didn't use my name because of "HIPPA" stuff obviously. The article said it was a 17 year old female. The symptoms had started at the age of 16 and did not worsen til the age of 17. So I have attached the link for the article with this page, and a picture of myself around the time it happened. I think the picture was honestly taken a short time after it happened and I was doing better. Thanks for reading. I hope people came become more aware of this condition in adolescents.
LINK IS BELOW:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3065405/
