That little froggy danced. For. Five. Straight. Days. Seriously?

I'm assuming it's part of the healing process.  But damn.  I'm used to my heart going out of rhythm for a few minutes to, say, upwards of an hour.  But....Five days?  Seriously?  Five days straight?  That's a bit of a stretch, even for me.

Not all arrhythmias are created equal.  All of them feel different.  For me, whichever this was coming back to rear its ugly head, felt like... well, I guess the best way to describe it would be to say it's like how a car engine idles when there's a bad spark plug, or when a distributer cap gets a little bad.  All that bumping and thumping and sputtering about.  It literally feels just like that, and in my case it went on like that for days without any relief.

Exhausting.

But last night as I got in bed and laid on my left side, the side that anyone who deals with arrhythmia issues dreads laying on, I started to cough.  It was a chest cough, the kind that feels like someone squeezing your heart while they're sitting on your chest.  I'm no stranger to this, mind you, as this is something that comes with heart issues.  But this was a little violent and went on for a few minutes.  But after.... after wasn't so bad, really.  Because after is when I felt the calm inside my chest that I hadn't felt in days.  WHAT a relief that was.

I could feel the familiar ache in my muscles that comes with conversion and wondered if that had actually happened.  But there was still a flutter or two, so I wasn't quite sure.  Yet.. I would take what peace I could get, because it's really hard to sleep when you're heart's doing summersaults in your chest all night.  The coughing finally subsided, and I slept.  When morning came... the all over ache was there, but... the sputtering engine that was my heart the previous 5 days... had calmed.  No more spluttering about in my chest, no more cold sweats and oddball headaches out of nowhere, no more waves of dizziness.  My body was tired and worn out, chest was aching badly.  But hey, my poor heart had a serious workout, so... I wasn't surprised by that so much.

Maybe I should have called my cardiologist.  Dr. Osorio did tell me that if my heart went out of rhythm for 6 hours or more to call... but, I was really sure it would work itself out.  It did.  And yeah, maybe 5 days later.  But I did learn something...

I will NOT be waiting like that again.

And, the next time it happens, IF it happens again, I will call Dr. A (my cardiologist).  Dr. O, btw, is my EP.  If he were closer, I would call his office, but... he's 1.5 hours away.  But my point is, I learned my lesson.  That 5 day stint took too much out of me.

And there was this one other teeny, weeny little thing this morning.  For about two minutes it felt like someone had taken a blazing hot sword and ran it up under my ribs and into my chest a few times.  The burning ache went up my chest, into my throat and into my face.  I've felt this in the past, but it's been a while.  Maybe a one last violent protest from my heart in reaction to what I allowed it to go through over the last few days.  Sorry, heart.  I won't do that to you again.  I have a really high pain threshold (toothache being the only exception).

So I guess I have to be nicer to myself and try not to be such a damn toughie.  I need to get rid of the idea that my mantra has to be "It will go away," because now that I have health insurance I don't have to suck up the pain and suffer through it all.  Old habits die hard, I guess.

I have to admit... those 5 days sucked, and the momentary occasional flutters I feel even now make me think... please don't start again!