Hypo versus Heart Monitor in the wee small hours!

Starting to ignore some more minor heart flip-flops through the day as I don't want to run out of diary or look like a hypochondriac if this this turns out to be "normal" arrhythmia I'll just need to put up with!

Documenting most of them, though.

Boy, these attached electrodes are pretty heavy duty! Woke at 3.45am bathed in sweat, rigid, jerky, disorientated. My PJs were visibly saturated with hypoglycemic fight-or-flight sweat. I'd already had a little sugar and carbohydrate to raise a borderline 3.9 BG before bed to stay safe. It was then up to 8.8 so not entirely happy it did one of it's periodic plummets just a few hours later. A BG test winked an alarming 1.5 in the dead of the night. Not so alarming to me, after all these decades. I imagine professionals would have me whipped into hospital or at least have paramedics at hand if they saw the same, going by the book.

I had more jelly babies (instant sugar fix kept handy wherever I am.) Then crawled down for a couple of plain digestives (20g carb). I was so wet from hypo sweating I was totally amazed the heart monitor electrodes were still attached so firmly and not washed away in the drenching! By then I had gone from sweating to shivering, sore and even more trembly and jerky. That's when I'm "normal" with M.E.! I remember being most concerned not to let the heart monitor drop when trying to manage the emergency drill. I suppose that's why the NHS is right to put faith and funds into a piece of equipment which can cost £1,900 according to this site: BMA Medical supplies LifeCard CF Holter Monitor !

Slept a little, exhausted, by dawn and now feel like death minimally warmed up. I do think it's perhaps the best thing that could have happened, though, on sober reflection, as my heart flip-flops its way through the morning. These palpitation symptoms, along with the accompanying odd, faint, nauseous feelings at times, were relatively unnoticed apart from maybe imperceptible racing during the worst of the hypo. My chest only resumed giving its little flops and "electric" tickles in the aftermath.

At least with the Holter monitor in place, it may actually be possible to get to the bottom of these problems.
It goes back tomorrow to the local Cardio department, so need to rest up properly after all that lonely early hours drama. Need to save up some energy "spoons" to be able to get through that plus a diabetic eye screening tomorrow afternoon. One return bus journey only for the both, so still think that's another fortunate turn.

Maybe at the end of all this, we'll actually have a Cardio/Diabetic/ M.E. understanding vibe going on. Or maybe the light-headedness has made me even more stupidly optimistic than usual!

Clockwork no batteries

Got my Cardiology appointments through the post this morning:

Echocardiogram (Cardiac Ultrasound) at 9.20am Monday 14th November. Poss 30 minutes @ Cardiology Suite, Level A.


48-Hour Monitor (Holter tape) 10.00am Monday 14th November. Poss 30 minutes - technician to apply electrodes/wires.


Requested to return so recorder can be removed 48 hours later. 


That should be the morning of Wednesday 16th November. Which just happens to be the same day as a longer standing appointment for my yearly diabetic eye screening. That's scheduled for 2.30pm (eye tests) for 3pm (appointment with ophthalmologist).


Looks like a daunting amount of exhausting stuff in a two day period, with little chance for pacing along the way. At the same time, I'm looking at it as a saving of spoons on the Wednesday. It means only one bus journey there and back to hospital, if I can co-ordinate the third floor cardio visit to be just before the ground floor opthalmology. It also means my poor long-suffering mum will only have to be shuttling back and forth on various unreliable buses to support and accompany me on the two days instead of three or four that week! 

Maybe I can find somewhere to rest in between? Maybe not - it IS a hospital after all! Lights are sickeningly bright and recent "improvements" have reduced comfy seating in some waiting areas and presented us with "convenient" touch screens to book yourself in etc that mean even more stress, co-ordination and balancing than before. 

Not sure any of the specialists I'll be seeing that week understand M.E. really; they count me as a diabetic on these occasions, and you're only allowed to be looked at as one illness at a time, in my long experience! They do their best. So shall I!


Last few weeks have hardly slept until after 5am. Alternately shivery and soaked in perspiration. Chest and arms, neck and legs hurting so much and hands all pins and needles in mornings. When I do walk, its noticeably slower that ever, like when I was first up from completely bedbound.

 
 Blood sugar in double figures much of time this last week, as if fighting virus. Some sneezing, but not much. Neck glands sore, voice very weak and tiring/painful in chest muscles to speak. Making so many mistakes when writing longhand, forgetting things, words especially when speaking.

Last weekend saw second massive unannounced hypo of the month that took me completely out. Something is changing in my hypo patterns and awareness during the hypo itself, like being awake in a nightmare, losing whole segments of consciousness while not appearing comatose to others. Possibly now I've turned 50 the oestrogen isn't oiling the wheels any more. Or more likely my liver just has no more glucagon to "dump" when my BG plummets without as much as a "here we go!"

Updates to follow, but right now, please excuse me as I get properly horizontal again in a darkened room!

There is a light and it never goes out!

Back from Cardiology this afternoon.


Good news - I have a heart!
Better news - it's still beating!
Best news - first ECG came up normal, as did my BP, (so it should, controlled by ACE inhibitors).


Consultant wouldn't leave it there, though. My heart's hammering above 100bpm on a regular basis and the frequent palpitations this past month are cause for further investigation.  Taking into account my 27 years on insulin with frequent sudden warning-free hypos, my family history of dad's stroke at 45, maternal Gran's death at 52 from atherosclerosis and heart failure plus plenty of valvular heart disease, angina etc thrown in for good measure, I suppose it's best checked out.


So now I'm waiting for appointments for


(a) Echocardiogram


(b) 24-hour Holter monitoring tape


and 

(c) another session with the cardio consultant before Christmas. 

In other news, we have this exciting development in M.E. research.
Time to put all the disappointment of XMRV behind us and learn to spell "rituximab". (Why does it look like something spelled backwards to my random thought processes?)

BREAKING NEWS: ‘Chronic fatigue syndrome eased by cancer drug’, New Scientist, 19 October 2011 

67% of patients in the trial saw symptoms improve.
Some later relapsed, but researchers are addressing this to see whether 'periodic doses of rituximab could permanently keep the symptoms of CFS at bay'. With an illness characterised by a relapsing-remitting pattern there's obviously going to be much more serious research needed, but it's an encouraging start. Hopefully this will open up yet more discoveries and eventually some reliable answers to free M.E. and/or CFS patients from so much suffering.


Bit brainfoggled and bamboozled now after tiring day under hospital lights and on impossibly bumpy buses, so will get head round this properly another day. Thanks to all you lovely people who were thinking of me today. As Morrissey sang, in one of his more positive moments, "There is a light and it never goes out." XXX