So, I worked on Wednesday. When I got home, I accidentally fell asleep without my CPAP. Then I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and something very abnormal was going on in my chest- like a fluttering, which I had never experienced. I looked down and the situation was visibly obvious. It looked like my heart was frantically trying to escape. I figured that you shouldn’t be able to see your heart beating, so I whipped out my pulse-ox that I got during COVID, and it corroborated that things were off. I gave it time, but my pulse just kept getting faster and faster:
Just as I was wondering if I should call 911, it went back to normal. The whole thing lasted, maybe… a minute? Not long at all, but I called my cardiologist the next morning. She’s on my care team because I have gastroparesis so I was always getting debilitating left-sided chest pain, and they had to rule out a heart condition. When she found out how high my pulse had been, they kindly got me in the same day (Thursday).
Now, I’m rarely one to be unprepared for med appointments, so I printed out my meds list as a spreadsheet and highlighted my suspects. I came in to the appointment and everything was normal. They even did an EKG and it was perfect. So, the cardiologist said my meds could stay the same. I underscored that I had an appointment for Spravato the next day, and she said to keep it. Apparently, this is a thing that happens if you forget to use the CPAP. I’m like… nobody told me it was that important? But now I’m much more consistent with it! I even got a souvenir from the whole experience; I’m now set up with a ZioPatch. I’m <100% sure how that works given my current situation on Proctor 2, since I didn’t bring the little booklet with me. I’m going to see if someone can send it over. But anyway, lesson learned!! If you don’t want your heart to turn into a psychotic jail-breaker, don’t ever skip the CPAP!