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Ugh last night I had a big scary tachycardia event, probably an SVT. Had a good day, ran errands, cooked, knit. Then we were watching tv together in the evening when all of a sudden I felt my heart jump up to 160bpm. It’s such a horrible horrible feeling. I get all hot too. It’s terrifying.

So, yknow, I sat there for an hour waiting for it to clear up while Dave gathered my hospital go-bag and monitored my vitals. I tried all the vagal maneuvers, tried to puke, nothing helped. Hovered at 150-160bpm. So he called the EMTs and they arrived in about 2 minutes (it’s good living down the street from the fire station)

They hooked me up to the 12-lead ECG, I explained that it wouldn’t look like a heart attack but wasn’t, etc etc etc. Same old. I walked out to the gurney under my own steam, got into the ambulance, and while they were checking me over all of a sudden I started to feel better. Asked them to check my BPM and presto I was down to 120. So they did a new vagal maneuver that involved me blowing into a syringe for 15 seconds and then they tipped me back flat on my back and raised my feet in the air. After that my heart dropped down to 112-ish which is normal for me under stress. So then we went around and around for a while, trying to decide if I should go to hospital or not. All of their machines said I was having either a heart attack or 5 other deadly conditions, but I know my body.

They unhooked me from everything and let me walk back and forth in the ambulance to see what happened. It didn’t affect my heart rate much and my o2 was back to normal so I decided I was ok to stay home. The EMTs, Jordan and Kyle, were really understanding and reasonable. I had to sign the “against medical advice” form, of course, but they very kindly said to call again if I felt worse and they’d come back, no problem.

Then Dave tucked me in and I went right to sleep and slept for, what, 10 hours? 87 bpm now. Feeling tired but ok. Bullet dodged, again.