The Heart of the Matter

So, I've been a bit absent from things again lately.  But it is not without good reason.  See, we've been dealing with an unwanted adventure for the past week or so.  I'll begin at the beginning, a few weeks ago.  Amy had been having these "episodes" where her heart began to race, she got light-headed and dizzy, and she was very tired and lethargic.  We put off a trip to the doctor for a while, trying to self diagnose the issue.  We tracked the episodes, we tried to notice triggers or similarities between them.  But we could find none.  When they began she was having them about once a week.  As of last week it was more like once a day.  So finally, under the pressure of family and friends, she went to the doctor this past week.  Her doctor in turn sent her to a cardiologist.  The trip to this specialist nearly ruled out any form of anxiety/stress problem.  She was ordered to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours to see if they would be able to find any patterns and/or answers that way.  While wearing the heart monitor she had one episode.  However, after turning it back in to the doctor and receiving the phone call back from him, we found out that they were occurring much more frequently than we thought, and were actually worse than we thought.  He mentioned 5 incidences, and alluded to more, where her heart rate accelerated, the worst being at 3am when it went above 150 bpm, while she was asleep.  

This news was of course not what we were awaiting, nor was it what we wanted to hear.  He ordered her in for further and more extensive blood work.  Basically, he thinks that it is not a heart related problem.  The reason for this is the fact that the rhythm of her heart is not changing, it is just sped up significantly.  Instead, he thinks it is something hormonal.  Something in her body is releasing some hormone for some reason.  This in turn is causing her heart to race.  So, what we thought was the problem is actually a side affect of something else.  We have several possibilities as to what the problem might be, but I'm not going to get into them here.  Not now.  Some are relatively minor, others quite a bit more serious.  As you can imagine, things are a little heavy in Drosche Land right now. 

So now we wait.  There's that word, yet again.  Wait for the results of her blood work.  Wait for answers.  Wait for the next step.  Wait.  This seems to be a theme in our lives lately, huh?  You'd think we would be experts at this by now, but nope.  It doesn't get any easier.    Thus we proceed in the same manner as we have with everything else.  With lots of prayer.  Hopefully Monday brings answers instead of more waiting, but we will see.  Until then we pray, lots, and of course wait.

All is (not totally) well, with heavy hearts, in Drosche Land.