During the first major incident last May, my heart just felt like a
three cylinder engine pounding away on only one or two cylinders. No
pain and no light headedness. Just very unnerving because I could
feel my heart flopping around. At that time I believe my rate might
have been about 80 per minute.
During this most recent major incident, my heart was again feeling
like it was flopping around, but it felt very slow. When I took my
pulse I could only detect about 45 beat per minute. This, of course,
concerned me because it was different than the incident in May.
I had another appt. with the cardiac specialist two weeks ago, at
which time he looked at the EKG that I had done in the emergency room
while out of town last month. He confirmed that it wasn't
necessarily AF this time, but was just a premature beat every few
beats or so.
When told him my pulse was only about 45, he explained that it
probably wasn't that low, but that it only felt like it was because
of the nature of the premature beat. He believed that my rate
probably was normal.
The emergency room doctor gave me some blood pressure medication
(Toprol) to try the next time I had a major episode. This is
supposed to slow down and stabilize my beat. At first this concerned
me because I believed my rate was already too low, but apparently the
Cardiologist doesn't believe it was.
I have tried to quantify when and why my heart starts to act up. I
cut out all caffeine. I cut out my daily Green Tea for about three
weeks because you mentioned that there could be some herb within the
tea that was causing not only the irregular heartbeat but also my
insomnia. So far nothing I've eliminated has made any difference.
Sometimes I can go days without an episode (or noticing and episode),
but then for no apparent reason it will start to act up. I thought
it might be exhaustion, but just yesterday I was extremely exhausted
but without any episode. So, go figure.
Overall, I can only believe that my recent episodes this past year
and my insomnia are the result of unknown, silent stress.
I need to do something because the insomnia is a real problem. I
plain and simply will not go to sleep without Lunesta.
And, even then I need to take more than the standard 3mg dose,
otherwise I always wake up around 2:30am and then just float in and
out of sleep for the next few hours, only to arise and be exhausted
all day.
Please help. I need a magic bullet.
Thanks,