updates... again

I am counting down the time until Joe is back from St. George and done with his internship. I am really excited that he has had this opportunity to be there, but I can't wait to live in the same place again. It would be really cool if Joe got a job offer to go down there after graduation. It would be really nice to be able to have more time to explore that part of the state since neither of us had time to go on adventures down there this summer.

It has been a more than a week since my last post and I realized I needed to update you all on the good things with my heart that have happened since then.

Last Monday I was having way too many near fainting episodes, too many to count. My doctor made a lot of changes to my medication routine and it has worked really well. The day after I was released from the hospital I only had 2 near fainting episodes which was a complete miracle! The next day I didn't have a single episode, but the following day I had three. Since then I have not had any fainting episodes since then and I have been feeling so much better.

I met with one of my doctors on Monday and he gave me permission to return to work!! I was able to work for a little bit today and it felt great to be back to work. I am still not allowed to drive, so my mom has been in town to chauffeur me around.

We did set a date to do another ablation...September 23! I am grateful to all of you who have kept us in your prayers. Unfortunately this looks like it will be a long road to recovery, so I may be asking for your thoughts and prayers for a while.

I promise I will have a non-heart normal life post soon.

Home

I made it home from the hospital! I love all of my nurses who took such great care of me! Thank you very much ladies. I am now resting at home!

Life is like a box of chocolates

I think Forest Gump said it best, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are gonna get."

Friday was one of those mornings that I didn't expect. I was actually feeling well that morning and got in the shower. My mom has been great and stays in the bathroom when I am in the shower in case I feel faint or anything else. Things were fine and I got out of the shower and went to get dressed and my mom left to take the dog on a quick walk. I suddenly felt tired and so I sat down in the chair, next thing I knew I woke up and was totally confused about where I was, and I had no idea how long I was out, I felt weak so I went for the bed, but was incredibly short of breath. I knew something was wrong, I tried to take my pulse but it was very slow, I guessed in the 30's or 40's. I was able to call out for my mom, and when she heard me she came in the room. We immediately called my doctor and he told us to come in immediately. So off my mom sped to Provo. I had no idea she had it in her to drive like that. After discussing with my doctor the decision was made to have me admitted to the hospital for monitoring. That is where I have been since. We are trying to figure out my medications and what works best for me. The problem is that my heart rate is variable ranging from 36-140 at times, also I am having pauses where my heart isn't beating, sometimes for as much as 8 seconds. My doctors are trying to decide if a pacemaker is needed or if my lazy SA node will wake up and do it's job, and then maybe I will have a normal heart.

Joe came up from St. George and has been here with me at the hospital. Can I just tell you all what an amazing husband I have! I love him and don't know how I got so lucky.

Achy breaky heart

One of my favorite songs when I was in elementary school was "Achy breaky heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus, it was even the first CD I ever owned. Maybe this was my body trying to tell me something. Isn't it ironic?

It's been almost 3 weeks since by last cardiac ablation and I thought I should inform you all on the events of the last 3 weeks. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about click here and this will catch you up.

The first week after the procedure I felt good and it seemed like a normal recovery. After a week my heart started racing and I fainted. I have never fainted before, so this was a new experience. I was staying at Aunt Cheryl's condo in Snowbird and I thought that the high altitude and all the irritation on my heart was the cause.

A few days later I kept getting that same feeling and came close to passing out. Soon I was fainting daily and almost fainting another 10 times. I was in denial that anything was wrong. I had 2 weeks off work to recover from my procedure. I love my job and was really excited to be back to work. I was having a tough morning at work, but I tried to keep it to myself. One of my coworkers Rick came and asked me about my procedure. While I was talking to him I fainted. I was only out for a few seconds. Rick has the hook ups with telemetry and put me on so that he could monitor my heart. Soon enough my doctor was on the phone and I was leaving work.

We found out the reason why I am passing out is that my SA node (the pacemaker of the heart) is a bit lazy and slow to react. We have it recorded that my heart didn't beat for about 4 seconds because my SA node wasn't working appropriately. Another problem is that my heart doesn't know what to do and one of the areas that they ablated is slowly coming back.

Today I met with my doctor and we discussed my achy breaky heart. Hopefully my SA node will decide to not be so lazy (he said this sometimes happens). If the arrhythmia comes back it looks like in about 10 weeks I will have another ablation.

I'm hoping that the fainting will stop once we get me under control and that I can return to work.

Please keep praying for my heart, also pray for Joe. My doctor didn't let me recover in St. George with Joe and so we have been spending a lot of time apart. I know it has been hard for him to have me recovering 300 miles away, even though he has been able to come see me on the weekends.

Oldies

These are all old pictures from May, but better late than never to document them right?

St. George has been fun for Joe, While visiting him one weekend we even were able to go to Snow Canyon and do some exploring.
Joe explored caves, I opted for fresh air.
It is no secret that we love Las Vegas, so when we celebrated our 3 year anniversary May 22 we went to Las Vegas for the night and we were able to see The Lion King! I loved it and I am so sad that no one has ever expressed how awesome it actually is. The actors were amazing, I wanted to take little Simba home. The costumes were surprising I was not expecting them to be that fabulous. And it helped that our seats were awesome, we literally couldn't be closer to the stage.

Recovery

So far this recovery from the ablation has gone really well. We did have to stay in the hospital an extra night because my heart rate was high and would not come down after my first time up. But Sunday morning we were able to leave and I went right home and went to bed, my doctor decided to start me on an anti-arrhythmic medication after all to help my heart calm down. It kicked in fast and before I knew it my heart rate went from 130 beats per minute (bpm) to 60. I was looking forward to recovering in St. George so that I could be with Joe when he got home from work, but when Dr. Wang found out about that he told me I needed to stay close and now I am staying at hotel Richards where my mom is taking excellent are of me.

I feel like I have been so blessed! I actually had to call my doctor because my heart rate was in the high 40's to 50's at times. And I am now off my anti-arrhythmic medication and he decreased the dose of one of my other medications already! He said that I would need to be on one of them to help my heart calm down from all of the irritation that it went through. These are all very good signs that my heart is doing well, and that just maybe this power house team of doctors were able to get the areas of my heart causing the problems and fix me.

Many of you have expressed that you have been praying for me and I really appreciate your prayers more than you know. When I thanked one of my doctors for fixing my heart he even said that it wasn't him, but that it was someone upstairs who helped. I am very grateful for my religion and the strength that it has given me and Joe during this trial in our life.

I will try to keep you updated on my continued recovery, but basically my day goes a little something like this.
9:00-wake up and watch the price is right
10:00-12:00 Nap
12:00 Eat
2:00-4:00 Nap
6:00 Eat
7:00 Watch TV with my Dad
9:30 Out sleeping for the night :)

It is a nice relaxing life at this time, I can't complain. It is just crazy how much sleep I need. Thanks again for all your prayers!!! I appreciate all of you!

Recovery

Well we are here in recovery after (crossing our fingers) the first successful ablation. Sarah checked into the hospital yesterday at 10:45. They took her almost immediately to the cath lab. She was smiling and kept saying, "I am so excited." The nurses and others looked at her funny because they had never had a patient be excited about an ablation. The doctors started the procedure sometime between 11:00 and 11:30. We heard word at a little after 7:00 pm that they were done. The doctors were very persistent. One of the doctors said this morning that they wanted to keep going until they got her arrhythmeas because he knew that he wouldn't be able to come to work and see Sarah everyday with an arrhymea still persistent.

Sarah was taken up to her room on the Cardiac floor at about 8:00 pm last night. We got to get in and see her around 8:30. The nurses that she works with all wanted to come see her and check up on her. It has been really nice to have so many caring friends looking after her.

Sarah was pretty sleepy and doped out until about midnight. They gave her a lot of medicine to make her sleep because her procedure lasted 8 hours. It took her a long time before she was really awake. She kept saying, "I am trying so hard to open my eyes," and "I just can't open my eyes right now." Everyone said, that it was ok and she just had to rest.

Sarah had to lay flat on her back and could not bend her legs until 7 am this morning. It was a miserable night for her as she was very discomfortable from being on her back for such a long time. The reason that she could not bend her legs is because they did not want the sites on her leg where they went into her veins to start bleeding again. At 7:30 this morning she was able to get up and get out of bed. Her heart was a little irritated during this time when she was up and walking around but this is kind of to be expected because of all the work that was done yesterday.

Going forward things look very optimistic for the following reasons. In every other ablation that Sarah has had the doctors have gotten close to getting all the areas of her heart that have been causing arrhythmias gone but not completely. Because they could not get all of the areas completely irradicated the doctor would then cardiovert her and put her on anti-arrhythmia medicine. This time, the doctors completely eliminated the arrhythmias through ablation. Once the arrhythmias were gone then they tried to reinduce the arrhythmias through addrenilen and other other drugs. When they tried with Sarah her heart did not go back out of rhythm, and her heart rate only reached about 120-140, which is very normal. This is the first time, coming out of an ablation that she has not been cardioverted. The second thing is that she usually comes out of the ablation on anti-arrhythmia drugs. This time, she is not on any anti-arrhythmia drugs and her heart has been in normal sinus rhythm, except for the brief time that she was up and walking around this morning.

We should be out of the hospital later this afternoon or early this evening. Sarah has two weeks off of work and will be taking it easy. We appreciate all the kind words and prayers in our behalf. We hope that we are finally done with this journey.