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Results of month long event monitor (Read 9571 times)
zilly84
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Results of month long event monitor
Jun 13th, 2013, 1:53pm
 
Well I am currently 22 weeks pregnant. I had heart palps before pregnancy which were mostly caused by alcohol, anxiety, or medication. They had stopped, well occured less frequently, but started up again once I became pregnant. My doctor wasn't concerned at all. I had taken a resting EKG back in Dec, before I was pregnant, and it was normal. He said it was very common for women to have heart palpitations during pregnancy. He said he'd seen a pregnant woman who was having 10,000 palps a day and she was completely healthy. I can't imagine having that many. I'd go insane.

Anyway, I usually have one a day every couple days. I wore my King of Hearts heart monitor for almost a month. I took it off a week early because the electrode gel stuff was really irritating my skin. While I wore it I experienced 4 episodes. All of them,  except one, were my average feeling of either a larger beat felt in my neck or chest. The one that was different happened when I was barely awake, lying in bed on my left side. I slightly turned to my back and I felt my heart beating heavily and irregularly in my throat. I felt my pulse, either on my throat or arm, and I could feel it go, beat, beat, pause, beat, beat pause.  I just rolled back to my left side and it stopped. I would like to add, because I think it's relevent, I had very bad gas that night. Since then I have mostly stopped eating gluten because that is what was causing my gas. And also I think the weight of my growing uterus, along with the gas, could have been why I had a different event like that.

I sent back my results and they said the doctor would get them in 24 hours. I didn't get a call from my doc. I wasn't really expecting one. So I called just to see what they thought. They said they only picked up one PAC and everything else was normal. I suppose that maybe when the events happened, I could have pressed the button too soon? I was instructed to wait 6 seconds before pressing it but time slows down a bit when you are having one. I think they said that weird one was the PAC. I didn't talk directly to my doctor but his nurse relayed what he had said. He said he was not concerned at all and she even quoted him saying "I could be having some right now!" So I guess he wanted to express how common they are.  I have come a long way with my anxiety over my heart and palps, but I'll always question why I have these. I do believe that everything is okay. All I can hope is that they will occur less frequently after I have my baby. And I will continue not drinking alcohol or caffeine or anything else that can trigger anxiety for me.
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sto12
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Re: Results of month long event monitor
Reply #1 - Jun 13th, 2013, 4:08pm
 
I think reflux has a lot to do with the palps starting up initially. We probably had the isolated palp here and there long before we developed our anxiety about our hearts and we just didn't pay them much attention. Then one day for whatever reason we noticed one of the palps and from that moment on we started focusing on our our hearts and this caused the palps to increase. That's the problem, we experience something that is perfectly normal and it is something that happens to millions of people. The difference between us and them is that they don't have anxiety and so they never begin focusing on their hearts so their palps just remain in the background barely, if ever noticed. I have a lot of ectopic beats. They can go on for hours and seem like every 4th or 5th beat but they aren't as bad as they used to be. I was having them most of the day every day. Then one day I caught a UTI with some bleeding. Of course my anxiety made me think that it wasn't just a UTI but some form of cancer. I spent 1 week on antibiotics worrying every day that they wouldn't clear it up and I would be sent to a urologist only to be told I had bladder cancer or something. The odd thing was that from the moment I got the UTI until all my tests came back clear I never experienced 1 single ectopic beat (well not one that I noticed anyway). Why? Because I had something else to focus on and worry about. They came back 2 weeks later. Now I try really hard to remind myself that the ectopics stopped the whole time I worried about the UTI. It helps but I still can't convince myself 100 percent that there isn't something wrong with my heart.
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zilly84
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Re: Results of month long event monitor
Reply #2 - Jun 26th, 2013, 12:43pm
 
That is definitely not just a coincidence about them stopping while you were focused on other things. Before I was pregnant I really couldn't figure out a pattern with my palps but now I can. They seem to happen 98% of the time when I'm laying in bed on my left side. They have happened twice on my right. But mostly just on the left. I'm guessing the pressure of laying that way might agitate my heart. Either that or the increased blood flow causes it. Either way, I worry much less than I used to. I was thinking this morning how strong we all are. Most people would probably crap their pants if they got palps as much as we do. Although, I have freaked out a lot in the past. I'm so glad this forum is here for us all to hear each other's stories.
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