Atrial Fibrillation by Melvin (Corey) Young
You feel a sense of fluttering in your chest as if you are having an intense anxiety attack.
You have never felt like this before. You feel as though you cannot breathe in or out enough, you
feel as though you are about to pass out. The world seems to swim around you. You are terrified
and sure that you are going to die. Your eyesight dims a little, shadows flutter. You are jumpy, as
though walking on nails. Your heart is beating a million times a minute in your chest. You rush
to the emergency room, worried that you are about to have a heart attack and near passing out
from lack of oxygen. You arrive at the hospital; the admitting technician checks your oxygen
saturation, blood pressure, and heart rate. She looks at you like you are a dead man that walks
and talks. She seems to feel as though making you wait is not an option. She brings a wheelchair
to you, explaining that she doesn’t want you to put any more stress on your heart “ Oh God”, you
think to yourself, “She thinks I am about to die”. Cardiac patients are not allowed to wait for
long if at all. You are not allowed to walk, you have to be wheeled past the opened doors of the
examining rooms. You are pushed into a small room with a bed, a curtain, and various medical
equipment. The room smells of cleaning chemicals and alcohol. You are scared, this turns to a
state of almost terror as the technician and receiving nurse talk in quiet tones. You are asked to
change into a gown and asked to leave the opening in front to allow access to your chest. Your
pants are ok to leave on but you are asked to remove your shoes. You lay back and watch the
nurse fit the blood pressure cup on your arm and place an oximeter on your index finger. Your
heart rate is shown on the machine to your side, it is fluctuating wildly making your heart seem
to skip more. Your blood pressure is up, you breathe harder and faster than normal. “They are
going to tell me that my heart is damaged this time and that I will die here tonight in this creepy, smelly, cold place. The nurse asks what medications you are currently taking, you lift up your
plastic freezer bag full of pill bottles, and tell her “it’s just easier for me to grab them all and put
them in the bag when I have to come here.” She gives a little smile and nods her head politely.
She asks how long it has been since you last ate or drink anything. “Several hours”. you reply.
The emergency physician, another nurse and an EKG technician come in and introduce
themselves. You can tell they have experienced someone with you symptoms before. The doctor
asks you to explain your symptoms, you tell him about your heart and ask “ am I going to die?”.
He says not from this. He tells you he has ordered an EKG and will return shortly. The
technician introduces himself. Then he asks if it is ok if he shaves your chest partially. You reply
it is ok, it’s not the first time it has happened , it won’t be the last. He then places twelve leads
onto your chest and runs the machine for a few seconds. He looks at the tape, confident that he
has what he needs. He takes the wires off but says he wants to leave the connecting pads in case
they are needed again. They will be. A nurse comes in to place an IV, you tell her that you are a
hard draw, she seems to wince. she tries two times and gets one into your hand, it hurts and the
way it is taped down is not helping any. Your heart still races. You still feel horrible and scared.
The doctor comes back and tells you that you are in atrial fibrillation. Your heart is not beating
correctly. The top two chambers of your heart are out of sync with the bottom chambers of your
heart, this is not immediately life threatening but you are scared still. The doctor orders an
ultrasound of your heart to called an echocardiogram. This is a test that uses sound waves to get
a picture of the top chambers of your heart to make sure there are no blood clots in them. Atrial
fibrillation can stop blood from being removed from your heart, it can clot if not removed
properly. Clots there can break free and cause a heart attack or stroke. This just scares you more.
