When my brand-new doctor told me approximately 15 minutes after meeting him that he thought I had a congenital heart defect, Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, I broke down in tears.
“Did I scare you?” he asked, young and nervously. “This is fixable. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No,” I replied through my sudden and uncontrollable outburst of tears. “I’m crying because you’re the first doctor to listen to me.”
I started having heart palpitations – gosh, a long time ago. I don’t even remember when they first started, but I started really paying attention to them in college, sometime between 19 and 21 years old. I mentioned it to my doctor in passing at an appointment once during this time.
“Sometimes my heart beats really fast, and it goes on for a long time. Is that something I should be worried about?”
“No, you’re in college, you’re probably up late and probably enjoying the nightlife in Bloomington too much,” was essentially his answer. And I chose to believe that at the time. Over the years, other doctors had other things to say.
“You’re drinking too much caffeine!” (I was.)
“You’re stressed from planning your wedding!” (I was.)
“You’re pregnant; your body does weird things when you’re pregnant.” (It does.)
But the truth was, the heart palpitations got scarier and more frequent. And I knew deep down that none of those things were the sole reason. Eventually, after an unproductive conversation, I told my doctor I was going to start tracking my episodes. And I did for almost a year. I made up my own scale—what time of day they started, what I ate or drank in the hours leading up to it, what I was doing, and how long they lasted. Sometimes, I would have to write down that I had two diet Cokes that day, went on a long walk, had a stressful day at work, and the palpitations lasted for five minutes. Other times, I would wake up from a deep sleep, my heart beating so hard my chest hurt for hours after they ended, with no reasonable explanation to write down with them.
On my son’s 2nd Christmas, I had to take a break from helping him open Christmas presents by laying down for almost 35 minutes, willing my body to stop being scary. “You should probably go to the ER when that happens,” my firefighter dad told me once. And he was probably right. Once I started regularly wearing a smartwatch, I was able to see the beats-per-minute my heart was doing at a resting rate and when I had an episode, and the difference in numbers was often startling.
In 2022, my papaw passed away after complications from a heart surgery. I started to really think about my heart and how I knew deep down something was wrong, and I was ignoring it even more than my doctors seemed to be. I promised myself my New Year’s resolution for 2023 was going to figure out what was going on with my heart.
My long-time general doctor retired, and a new doctor started in his practice. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get in as a “new patient visit” until February 2023. I was not pregnant when I made the appointment in August 2022, but I was by February.
After being introduced to the new doctor, I told him my concerns. My heart palpitation episodes were completely random, seemed to not tie in with any consistent outside factors, and sometimes were very long and very scary. Sometimes, I wouldn’t have an episode for six months; other times, I would have three in one week. My new doctor shrugged and said, “There is nothing written in your file about this.”
I shook my head in disbelief. I had told at least three of my doctors multiple times a piece and even turned in my symptoms form I made myself about my episodes, and there was still nothing written in my file about it.
“Let’s do an EKG,” he said. “Right now.”
Within fifteen minutes of meeting me, he and his nurse had me hooked up to the machine. A few minutes later, he had printed out preliminary results. He told me that based on what he saw, I had something called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. Essentially, my heart had an extra “pathway” that occasionally messed up the beat. He referred me to a cardiologist and told me it was likely entirely fixable. This is when I burst into tears. (Also, I had a lot of pregnancy hormones going on; I can’t forget that.)
Meeting with my cardiologist for the first time was scary. I was in the waiting room with people a lot older than me. Heart stuff are things old people deal with, I couldn’t help thinking. My cardiologist met with me, gave me another EKG to confirm the results, and sent me home with a heart monitor I was to wear for 30 days on my chest. Mind you, I was pregnant, and nothing fit correctly anyway, but trying to hide that heart monitor under my clothes was a full-time job, it felt like, and I am pretty sure I only wore four outfits to work the entire month. I also had to carry around a heart monitor smartphone, so carrying around two phones for the entire month was more annoying than one would realize, and I was constantly worried about losing it.
While wearing it, I was hoping so badly I would have an episode. Usually, I hope not to have one, but I really wanted to have one to catch on the monitor. Alas, at the end of the month, I did not have any major episodes. However, when I went back to the cardiologist, I did have some minor episodes that the monitor captured that I didn’t even realize happened. It caught enough, I suppose, to make me a candidate for a heart ablation.
About nine weeks after I had my baby (and a second C-section), I went back to my cardiologist to schedule my ablation. I burst into tears once we started talking about scheduling it. “I finally feel normal after my C-section,” I remember crying. My cardiologist looked at me and nodded. He wanted it done within a year, but he was okay with me postponing it a little bit to make myself feel more comfortable getting it done.
So, at the end of May this year, almost a year after having my son and six days after my school year as a teacher ended, I had my heart ablation at 35 years old. I was scared and so nervous without knowing how my body would react, but in the end, it was one of the easiest procedures I’ve had done.
They went in through an incision in my groin and essentially “burned off” the extra pathway. I was asleep for a few hours, woke up and went home later that day. I was able to eat normally, sleep fine, and move around my house. I was a little sore for a few days and was not allowed to pick anything up for a while, so leaving my sons (especially my one-year-old, just-over-the-weight-limit kid) with their grandparents for the long weekend was the hardest part of the whole ordeal.
And that’s it. It’s done. My extra pathway should be gone forever, and my heart palpation episodes should cease to exist after my heart completely heals. But if I had continued to ignore it—or let my doctors ignore it—it definitely could have become a major issue later in my 40s, 50s, 60s, or beyond. I have a cardiologist I will continue to see every few years to check on anything else that arises, a tool most 30-somethings don’t necessarily have yet.
It is a known fact that women often get the short end of the stick when it comes to heart health. My goal for you is to take notice and advocate for yourself if you think something is wrong. Go to the doctor if you think something is up. I truly knew deep down something more was going on, but didn’t push when my doctors had something else less scary to tell me. I wish I had listened to my gut about my heart a long time before I did.
