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.