Broken heart

Our second midterm caught me a bit behind and I spent last week in coffee shops, cramming cardiovascular bits and pieces into my brain. I was with a study group for four hours on Thursday, drilling through cardiac pathologies - coarctation of the aorta, atrial septal defect, tetrology of fallot, pulmonary hypertension. At clinical on Saturday our conference involved two hours of pouring over ECG strips trying to find paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation.

We were let off of clinical an hour early and a group of us were on our way to sushi when my own heart skipped a beat. A weird sensation started in my chest: pressure, pounding, an extra beat. I was still at the hospital so I checked my oxygen sat (normal) and my pulse (normal) and headed off to dinner. And it didn't stop. The next morning the pressure and pounding woke me up at six - early even for me. It continued the rest of the day and I pulled out my stethescope and noted extra heart sounds; some sort of arrythmia for sure.

After two days of this with no relief, I got it checked out, ECG and all. There's nothing quite as stupid as having to tell a health care provider that you have some strange problem, oh and by the way, I'm a nursing student and have been studying this disease process for the last week. Hello crazy!

The triage nurse, physician and ECG all confirmed that something was in fact going on, premature atrial complexes to be exact. Oddly enough, PAC's were on our midterm. They're probably related to anxiety (although I'm not particularly anxious) and not hypochondria or a heart attack. They should go away and my cardiovascular system will go back to normal in time for me to develop asbestosis or bronchiectasis or one of the other lung pathologies we're studying next.