I fail to understand at all those who are completely against the health care reform that the United States is currently debating unless, of course, they are simply shilling in favor of the insurance company that they work for.    Who hasn’t had to deal with the twisted quagmire of plans, coverage, premiums, deductibles, copays, coinsurance, pre-existing conditions, and denials of coverage?

Oh, right — THE RICH haven’t, because they can just pay for it all to be taken care of.

This is not to say I don’t like the rich or the Republicans that often represent them.    Some of their work ethic is very admirable — work hard, save much, be smart, frugal, and conscientious and you will reap much good.     Anyone can become wealthy and live in the lap of luxury — after all, that’s the American way and ultimately, I have no issues with that philosophy.

The problem with these ideals is that they break down in the face of major health issues.    Even the best planners, savers, and investors amongst us living on a modest income can be thrashed into a bloody pulp by one large medical issue and the costs it incurs.     Considering that they can run into six figures in a hurry, even if your savings account has a wonderful $20,000 balance in it (which most of us can only DREAM of), it’s simply a drop in the huge ocean of expenses you can rack up for a heart attack, stroke, cancer, or any number of other problems that nobody plans on having.     The birth of my son was $56,000 before insurance alone, with us having to shoulder about $8,500 of that in payments that are still being made.    (We’ll own him outright one of these days, by golly.)

So while the conservatives are saying, “Government running health care is a bad idea; just work hard and you’ll get enough to afford coverage, the system works like it is,” the reality is that even with hard work it may not be enough.    You may get coverage, but at such a huge price that you cannot afford it, and likely you will earn too much to be eligible for “poverty” status and the coverage that provides.    You could get coverage denied because you have a pre-existing condition or because you develop a condition that the insurance company chooses to not cover.     Maybe you’re switching jobs and the coverage will drop in between, leaving you exposed and vulnerable.   The drugs for your particular condition may fall outside the blanket of your prescription plan and rack up thousands of dollars every month.  If you’re lucky and receive coverage you can afford and it kicks in to cover your problem, you might be slogged with paying a high deductible, copays, or your insurance can hit the lifetime cap and all assistance dries up for everything now-and-forever.

Any one of these situations is enough to throw a reasonable middle-to-lower class person into despair; many have had to struggle with several blows for a single situation.   The fact is that these are more the norm than the exception and we all know someone who has dealt with the hassles of at least one of these is testament large this problem looms over our society.

I don’t begrudge the insurance companies for being a business and making a profit, but at the same time it’s the point of the entire system that has been lost, and that point is caring for a real human’s health and well-being.    People are being analyzed, economized, and marginalized due to numbers, not needs.    Uncle John’s cancer treatment has become a fiscal decision, not a best-tool-for-the-job selection.   The pregnant mother in between jobs can’t get maternity coverage for herself and her baby in the month in between because it’s not a good risk profile.    Because it’s a drain on the bottom line, the lifetime cap slams the door on the couple with the bouncing baby boy with the genetic disorder who has used up all the benefits and now has no coverage for his intensely-expensive needs.

We need to get our health care system back to one that takes care of people first, profits second;   patients, not liabilities.    This is what the propopsed health care bill is fighting to achieve through some regulations that ensure coverage when things don’t go right and life hands you lemons you are too weak to squeeze for yourself.    In the end, if it costs each of us a bit more out of our paychecks to ensure that anyone and everyone has access to affordable, useful health care in all situations, then I say, sign me up;  I’m all for something that gets us back to one of the most important causes we have to fight for today — taking care of each other.

AKA:  Ticker Update #2

You can read the beginning of this story here and an update here.

Since this fiasco began, my heart has continued to thump around in my chest, apparently oblivious to the fact that it’s caused me no end of grief and probably countless new charges and line items on my hospital bills which, thankfully, the insurance company gets to shoulder the brunt of.  One has to wonder why your organs don’t have more sympathy to your own plights, especially when they cause it.

On Thursday of last week I finally got the results from both my echo-cardiogram and my Holter EKG monitor that I wore for 24 hours to record my heartbeat.  The echo came back with the following report:  “If you weren’t so fat, we could have gotten a better picture.”  Gee.  Leave it up to a doctor to say something nice, eh?  Actually, the written report said, “Due to the patient’s size, we were unable to obtain a clear picture.”  But I think we all know what was implied here, don’t you?

The Holter’s results were more definitive:  “occasional PVCs”. This does not refer to polyvinyl chloride plastic, as I am more commonly dealing with when I partake in a plumbing project in my basement, but to premature ventricular contractions, a form of heart rhythm aberration.

Normal heartbeats are initiated in the right-hand atrium by something called the SA Node.   This is the “pacemaker” of the healthy heart.   All parts of the heart have the built-in ability to fire an electrical signal to beat their own part, but the SA node is the biggest and fastest, so it usually goes first and causes all the other parts to cascade in order, triggered by the signal from the SA node.  Thus, a normal heartbeat.

In PVC, for some reason, one of the ventricle’s own firing centers goes ahead of the SA node.  This “odd” signal causes the heart to beat backwards for a second, thoroughly confusing the poor thing and making it shake its head around like it just biffed itself on the cupboard door after trying to raise its head to hear what its wife was yelling from the other side of the house.  In essence, it misses a beat entirely, then comes back in with a vengeance on the next one, and resumes the proper course towards the horizon.

Would you like to see my EKG from today and a PVC in it?  Ok, here ya go:

Oh, is that hard to see?  Here’s a closeup of my EKG:  2 normal beats, a PVC, and 2 more normal beats:

They’re one of the most common forms of heart arrhythmia and are usually benign, but of course, I had no idea on mine.  So my doctor scheduled me in for a stress test.

Yup, this is the stereotypical man running on a treadmill with wires suctioncupped to his nipples, except that they are adhesive, not suction, and very tightly on my chest hair, not my poor little nubs.

I did this today at 8am — quite the wakeup!  The nurse informed me that they had to get my heartrate up to a target level, which turned out to be 161 beats/minute, 85% of my max heart rate of 190.  It took me 7 minutes to get there and then I held it for another 3 minutes, running at 4.2mph on a 16% incline.  While this may not sound at all impressive to you folks out there in Jogs-To-Work-ville, it was a heavy breather, and not the good sort, either.

All the while they were taking an EKG and the nurse, a PA, and a resident were watching the progress, both to evaluate the results and in case I were to keel over and assume a horizontal position.

Thankfully, my PVCs decreased as my heart rate went up, and all but disappeared during the highest portion of the test, which is great news.  This is exactly what you want to happen, as it means that the heart’s own pacemaker is overpowering the faulty electrical activity and forcing the regular rhythm, even if the ventricle is still generating the irregular beat, a phenomenon known as overdrive suppression.

In layman’s terms, it means that my heart’s not fucked up.

I have to wait to really call it an “all clear” until my doctor gets the opportunity to review my test results, but that’s probably the case — a benign case of the bumps.  The next task will be to see if it’s worth even bothering to treat them or if it’s simply better to learn to live with them, which I am getting MUCH better at.

But for now, I can live with the knowledge that it looks very positive for me and my ticker.  Three cheers for pumpers that take a licking and keep on ticking.

Just a brief update — I wore my Holter monitor for the 24 hours, took it off, and then had an echocardiogram at Mercy Medical Center North Iowa at 3pm on Friday.   While the technician couldn’t say anything about it (they’re not allowed, legally, to comment), she at least had the heart to tell me that if she saw anything bad, she wouldn’t let me leave, and she let me leave, so….

Unfortunately, because of the weekend, I won’t hear anything till Monday at least, if not later, because people have to read the monitor output and the echo and get an analysis to my doctor, blah, blah, blah….

Meanwhile, my chest continues to jump around like a rabbit on crack and I am trying desperately to ignore it.   I’m doing fairly well, I think, although my resolve and ability to distract myself varies at times.   Oh, to feel normal again…

I can’t say that right now I’m in the best position of my life.    At the moment, I have a Holter heart EKG monitor hooked up to my chest to monitor every beat of my heart for 24-hours so the doctors can try to figure out what’s going on with my ticker.

Hellloooo, 30.

Saturday night as we raced home from Cedar Rapids after a lovely weekend that had a bad ending (kid puking), I started feeling my heart doing odd things.   After feeling it for awhile, I realized that it was missing a beat every so often.   It would be going along and then there’d be this long pause where a beat would normally hit in the rhythm, and then a HUGE beat would hammer my chest and it’d continue on its way.

Most disconcerting.   But I chalked it up to a lack of sleep, lots of adreneline from the situation, and so forth.   I wasn’t worried.

Until it continued the next day.   And the next.   And the next.

It only happens in periods, of course — an hour here, an hour there.   Never when I’m doing intense work.   Never when I’m sleeping (that I know of).   Only really when I’m wound up (anxious) or coming down from doing something heavy-breathing (not that, you twiddlehead).   To be honest, I’m not really sure of the triggers, only that it happens far, far too often.

There’s no other symptoms of a heart issue, thankfully.   No pain, tightness, sweating, dizziness, nausea, etc.   If there had been, you can bet my ass’d be in the ER quicker than a how’s-your-uncle.  I’m not completely stupid.   I just have these random feelings of emptiness and then a big BOOM as my heart comes back to life.   It really screws up my concentration.

So, I went and saw the doctor today, like any good paranoid patient would, but not before I had researched the possible diagnoses on the web, of course.   Dangerous, I know, but…my curiosity wouldn’t let me otherwise.   In this regard, my suspicions match the doctor’s analysis that I probably have a PVC or PAC — Premature Ventricular Contractions or Premature Atrial Contractions — both conditions that aren’t horrifically serious as long as they aren’t coupled with other heart disease.   But who knows about that?

Doc gave me a look over, listened a bit, popped me on the short-term EKG (didn’t show anything — heart didn’t act up, go figure), drew some blood to check hormonal and mineral imbalances, and then slapped this Holter monitor on me to record what’s going on for the next day.   I have wires crossing all over my chest and little sticky patches that will surely rip a ton of hair off my chest when we’re done, rendering me into a polka-dot painting.   I can pick up 56 channels and my bellybutton can tune in Howard Stern.

Noon tomorrow I can take this thing off (it has a little recorder box that has a countdown — I’m at 12 hours, 45 minutes to go) and then at 3 I have an echocardiogram to look at the structures of the heart and make sure it’s not a blockage, a bad valve, etc.   That should be interesting and nervewreaking all at the same time.

At this point, I’d just be happy to know what I’m up against, to know if I’m likely to drop dead randomly (the doctor says very unlikely, but…), and what my options and possibilities are for treatment, if any.   Sometimes the above conditions are simply untreatable and non-threatening, so you just have to live with them.    Let me tell you — trying to do anything useful when your heart is stopping every 3-6 beats for a pause and then slamming back into gear is damned near impossible.

I dunno.   I’m out of shape, overweight, and just was talking to my wife this past week about us both getting in better shape and weight.   I guess if this is a wake-up call for anyone, RING RING.   Sheesh.

Since shortly after birth, our son Keston has had a recurring skin issue. They are patches of rashes that appear on his skin, sometimes slowly and sometimes very quickly, but equally itchy. They are bad enough at times that all he can do while awake is to itch (which tears up his skin due to his razor-sharp fingernails). It also wakes him up several times a night because he’s uncomfortable and he thrashes around and itches for awhile before going back to sleep, usually with the aid of a bottle from us. This means that we’re still, at 5.5 months, getting up every hour or two to handle him.

It was originally diagnosed as eczema, but was elevated to an, “I don’t know,” status by the head dermatologist at the Forest Park Clinic in Mason City and we were referred up to pediatric dermatologist Dr. Jennifer Hand at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, to find out exactly what it was, perhaps why it occurred, and what to do about it. So yesterday I took a day off work and we made the 2 hour drive (and tank of $3.60/gallon gas) up to submit Keston to some poking and prodding and hopefully find some answers to his issues.

The trip was essentially worthless and utterly frustrating. The head dermatologist in Mason is convinced it is *not* eczema, yet once we got up there, the Dr. Hand gave him a brief glance and was like, “It’s just eczema. He looks great. What’s the problem?” Which is nice — he was having one of his good days, rare though they be — but it doesn’t give us many solutions for the nighttime itching and his outburst of rashes from seemingly nothing. Also, wouldn’t you do more if the head of the dermatology clinic in Mason doesn’t even know what the hell it is???

Sigh.

Of course, it started off badly — we were about 5 minutes late so we were rushing, driving through Rochester in the pissing rain, trying to find the parking garage, but that was no problem — we got there and checked in fine. However, when I checked in, the receptionist said, “Oh, is that paperwork for the doctor?” indicating the referral letter and the sheet of all Keston’s prescriptions and diet. I confirmed that it was, and she said, “Oh, ok, I’ll take that and make sure she gets it.” I thought that was nice, so we settled down into the very pretty and subtlety-lit waiting room.

But when it came time to see the doctor, we asked if she had seen the paperwork and she’s like, “No, what paperwork?” She sent the nurse after it, but the receptionist had run off to lunch and the nurse just came back and shrugged her shoulders. The doctor seemed unfazed by this and although we said we could wait for them to find the papers, she just said to continue on, she knew what it was and didn’t need to see the referral (which, in that letter, the doctor in Mason explains why he thought it *wasn’t* eczema). So we had to explain what was going on from memory, his entire history and meds/foods/etc. even though we had written it all down already (my wife has been extremely organized with it all, bless her).

So she weighed him (22lbs now, good thing we got the new car seat today) and briefly examined him and then she pulled out a sheet of suggestions for handling eczema and listed everything off, but we’re already doing everything on the sheet so she was like, “Oh, well, you’re doing good then. Carry on.” We did get another different antihistamine to try at night and yet another OTC skin cream but that’s about it. She said that Keston is nothing compared to some of the kids she sees whose eczema is so bad that they stop growing and get sepsis and staph infections. Which is nice enough to know that we’re not an extreme case, but we still feel like the poor sod shouldn’t have to wake up every hour or two at night itching and tearing up his skin.

So we left feeling very much like we had just completely wasted a tank of gas and an office copay. We went off and did some mild shopping and poking around Rochester, stopped to get supper at TGI Friday’s, decided we didn’t like the look and prices on the menu, and instead ended up at Famous Dave’s. As we did I kept getting madder and madder about the situation and now I’m really pissed about it. So I don’t know what to do at this point, but I think we got fucked and someone’s going to hear about it.

I mean…if we’re doing all we can for Keston and there’s nothing up with him but the eczema and so forth, fine. I can deal with that and we’ll keep on doing what we’re doing to control it. (She said most kids grow out of it by 1 years, but then they usually get asthma…joy.) But if it isn’t, I’m going to feel really bad that we were blown off and, at the time, I didn’t have the balls to tell the doctor she was being a daffy bitch (and or hunt down the stupid bint of a secretary and give her what-for for losing our goddamned paperwork).

Sometimes I envy Type A’s ability to speak up at the moment, whereas I always think about what I *should* have said at the time and then kick myself later. Hindsight…GAH!

For those of us around the Midwest, Mayo is touted as being one of the premier health care centres around, garnering the business of presidents and international dignitaries and handling thousands of cases a year. While I realize that my son’s skin problems are probably small potatoes in the the large scheme of things, don’t we deserve a fair whack at the resources as well, especially if we’ve been explicitly referred there?