When I was about 23, I had just come back from overseas, when I started to experience some chest pain. Turns out, the doctors believed that I had a virus that settled in my heart and started attacking it. All together I ended up spending about 15 days in the hospital, and never really got any clear answers.
It was believed that I got the virus from drinking the water. I never intentionally drank the water, but I did shower in it and use it brush my teeth. Brushing my teeth with unsafe water, was probably a horrible idea.
Anyway, after it was all said and done, the doctor ran some tests to see how much damage the virus had caused. I had some scar tissue in my heart, but the damage was minimal. Although, my heart rate has not been the same since. The doctor just kind of told me that the heart is a muscle, so it will get better with time.
Several years later...
I hadn't had my heart checked out in a few years, and I was starting to experience some shortness of breath and having a little bit of chest pain, so I went on down to the doctor's office for a check up. She immediately scheduled an Echo (heart ultrasound), and sent me over to the hospital for my test.
The echo didn't take very long, but I had to wait about 4 days before I got back any results and it was extremely nerve-wracking! Then my doctor (not the nurse), calls and leaves me a voicemail saying that she would like to go over my test results with me.
This can't be good. The doctor only calls when there is bad news... Plus, she called at 4:57 and their office closed at 5:00, so I had to wait until the next day before I could call her back. That is such a horrible thing to do!
Well, I got a hold of her first thing in the morning, and she definitely did not have good news.
"Valerie, your echo shows that you are in the first stages of Diastolic Heart Failure."
I'm sorry, what? Heart failure? I don't think so...
Unfortunately, she was telling the truth. She set me up an appointment with a Cardiologist and scheduled a stress test. The Cardiologist didn't seem too overly concerned, and just mentioned that my heart was a little bit stiffer than it should be. It seems that most of the doctors I encounter, don't really take any of it seriously because it seems hard to believe that a healthy, twenty-something woman, would be suffering from such horrible heart problems.
So, I took the stress test and had to wait a few more days to get the results. Finally, the other day a nurse left me a voicemail saying, "Your stress test came out okay."
What? Okay? Okay as in, not quite great, just okay? Or okay as in, everything's fine and okay?
Well, I still don't have any of these answers yet, but I can assure you that I have lost quite a bit of sleep over it. I do believe though, that I have handled all of it pretty well. I am able to laugh and joke about it, and just believe that whatever is supposed to happen will happen. My mother, on the other hand does not quite feel the same way....
I'll keep you posted.
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