Listening to my heart.

November is almost over, and I am so glad!
It has been such a stressful, busy month. All, by my own choosing, but I don’t think I quite knew what I was getting myself into. I have too many things that I want to do, and sometimes I forget where my focus should be. I often take on more things than I have minutes to do them, and I usually end up regretting it. “Pace yourself”, I say to myself. But, I don’t always listen.

I have this thing that happens with my heart on occasion. I describe it to the doctors by saying that my heart feels like it’s pumping sludge. Every so often, it just feels like it has to work a lot harder. It’s not painful, but during the moments it happens, I am very aware of my heart beat. In fact, I am aware of little else. It’s been going on for a while now, maybe 6 months. But, recently, it has dramatically increased in frequency and it was starting to freak me out.
So, I went to have some tests done in the hospital. Did anyone see the pic Kelly D. posted on Facebook? Oh, how I wish he wouldn’t have posted that. People were thinking I was knocking on death’s door, but in his defense, we were there for like 2 hours with nothing better to do, so he broke out the iPhone and started snapping photos, saying things like, “K, now look pathetic.”

Anyway. Long story short, I had to wear this heart monitor around for a week and every time I had an “episode” I was to push this little button and it would record my heart beats so I could later transmit them to the hospital. I also had to keep track of what I was doing at the time of the episode.
My journal looked something like this:
12:03 Yelling at kids
1:26 Yelling at kids
2:45 Yelling at kids
I’m kidding! (kind of) but I did notice that every time I recorded an episode, I was completely stressed out. I would be doing things like driving in terrible traffic, rushing to accomplish something, speaking in front of people at church, or even sitting still, but thinking about my heinous to-do list.

Sometimes, even just listening to my kids fight would trigger it. I told them that they are killing their mother. Kelly D. scolded me because maybe that’s not the best thing to tell a kid. But, when he turned his back, I whispered that I see a bright light and I’m going to walk toward it if they don’t behave.

The thing that I found interesting about the whole week, though was that I wasn’t really aware of how worked up I get over things. I didn’t know I was wound up so tight. It made me really self aware. The following week, I would start to feel an episode coming and I would stop and think about what was going on in that moment and I was able to calm myself down enough to stop it from happening.

One day, in particular, I had 10 million things to do, and I was about 20 minutes into a 30 minute drive when I realized I had forgotten something and had to turn around and go back home. I was already late and I was feeling completely frazzled. I felt my heart begin to react.
Tate was with me though, and he was chattering on about the parent teacher conference we just had and about books he was reading and who he sits by in class and I was just about to ask him to be quiet for a minute so I could figure out what I was going to do about my situation. But when I said, “Hey Tate….” he looked up at me with that little face of his, and that dimple in his cheek and his twinkly eyes and I couldn’t do it.

At that moment, I thought to myself, I’m not wasting time. How often do I get one on one time with this kid where we just talk? He seemed totally happy to just be with me along for the ride. Why can’t I do the same?
So, I took a deep breath and that’s what I did.
And guess what? No episode.

Several more things like this occurred and again, I was able to calm my heart down, by changing my thinking about whatever was going on.
It’s been almost two weeks now, and I have not had another episode to speak of.

I have yet to have the follow up appointment with the doctor, but I really think he’s going to tell me that there is nothing seriously wrong with me. Maybe he’ll say that I need to reduce stress and worry less and breathe more.

I got the hospital bill yesterday. $2000!!! (calm down, heart. I can make payments….) That’s a lot of money though, isn’t it?
A lot of money to learn something my heart already knew.
That so much of what I worry about is just stupid. And that I should recognize the good in everyday moments instead of stressing about what’s next and next and next.