Born Broken

A lot has been going on in my life lately.  Mostly positive and life-altering, but there's one thing I just didn't need.  I have been diagnosed with Wolfe-Parkinson-White Syndrome, a heart condition in which there is an abnormal electrical pathway that induces tachycardia (rapid heart rhythms). This came to light during a routine physical and EKG I had last year.  I've had many physicals throughout my life, but no EKG's or symptoms so I was shocked (and in severe denial) when this popped up.

After many more EKG's and daily monitoring for over a month, it's been proven that my heart goes into tachycardia multiple times a day and I don't even know it.  If I continue strenuous workouts and my heart rate gets too high I could easily drop dead.  Fun and here I thought working out was good for the heart.  It is, just not for mine at the moment.  Now my exercise is restricted to walking at a 3.0 rate max (no incline) and absolutely no weight training.  Nobody said anything about yoga so I guess if walking won't kill me, that should be fine.  Yoga isn't my thing, but it'll have to do.

Apparently this isn't the worst heart disorder to have because it can be easily fixed.  There have been quite a few peeps on my Facebook page who have been through it, which makes me feel better. Unfortunately I cannot proceed with surgery until mid May (it's out patient, thank God).  There's another situation preventing me from moving forward right now. We'll also find out how many accessory pathways I have at that time.  We believe I've had this condition since birth and most likely it's hereditary, so now my son will need an EKG at his next check-up since he's not demonstrating any physical symptoms of WPW.

For those of you interested, here is a diagram of what WPW looks like:

Normal heart vs. Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrome from Google Images

So there it is.  I was born broken.  Go figure.  My damn heart isn't wired correctly.  The first cardiologist I saw called me "weird."  I thought that was quite fitting being as though nothing in my life, especially love related issues, has been "normal."  LOL!  The hardest part about this for me is thinking that my poor son could come home from school and find me on the floor if I don't get this fixed.  How awful for a 6 year old.  So now there's an urgent need to go over the emergency stuff and hopefully I won't scare the piss out of him and he won't call 911 every time he sees me on the couch taking a nap.