Divine Cardiology (Part 1)

I was in nursing school sitting in an unidentified class with a particularly long winded professor when I suddenly broke into a cold sweat and grew very pale. My table partner, being very perceptive, noticed my plight right away and told me to leave class that she would share her notes. Similar episodes, sometimes accompanied by chest pain, continued to happen from time to time for several years.
As a nurse in cardiothoracic intensive care this happened several times while at work. It wasn't until two years ago however, that one of the charge nurses was on to me. She would see me rolling around my patients room in my computer chair looking like "death on cracker." It wasn't until she threatened not to let me come to work that I finally saw a cardiologist.
I wore an EKG monitor constantly for an entire month and even had to print my own strips. Of course as a cardiology nurse I also analyzed them but I found myself stumped right along with the cardiologist. The rhythm abnormalities didn't appear to follow any sort of usual pattern. The options were an invasive heart procedure which could possibly end in a pacemaker or a trial of a host of cardiac medications. The drugs helped a little at first but unfortunately also caused a very slow heart rate. For over a year we tried but couldn't find the answer. Fortunately, though symptomatic, the arrhythmias are self limiting. But I continued with my crazy schedules and stressful lifestyle and thus continued to mistreat my heart. I don't think I was entirely convinced that it was worth taking care of. Eventually, the cardiologist and I decided that because we couldn't find anything that "worked" and because the rhythms were not life threatening, we would discontinue care and ride it out for as long as possible.
Unfortunately the episodes were disruptive enough cause some hesitation in what activities I chose to participate in. I finally quit working on my beloved ambulance because I was afraid that one day "the thing" would happen at just the "wrong time." Worse yet, somebody might find out about my "broken heart."
Everyday I go to work, I see broken hearted people. I fill them full of drugs, shock them, manually pump their blood, pace them, etc... None of those things are really able to cure them, they are just meant to hold them over. In reality my patients are cardiac cripples. What most of them really need is a new heart, a good heart.
To be continued...