It was the morning of Wednesday Sep 20th 2023, and we’d gone out for a walk with Jolene at 7.25AM. I had eaten my breakfast (yogurt, chia seeds, flaxseed, blueberries) and taken my morning medicine of metoprolol – a beta blocker, and a baby aspirin. After the heart episode in Finland, these were the medications ascribed to me.
I had regularly felt a pain in the chest/ thyroid – about 5-7 minutes into starting a walk/ exercise, and I had equated it with the beta blocker medicine (metoprolol) kicking in to do its job. I’d take a pause, breathe and after a minute or so the symptoms would go away. We’d walked about 10 minutes or half-way when the symptoms kicked in.
This time the chest pain got worse and worse, until I felt the ICD (intra cardiac defibrillator) kick in. It felt like my whole body was jolted. However the ICD did its job, and my heart rate returned to normal.
The ambulance showed up quickly, and the EMTs were able to confirm my heart was back in sinus rhythm, my EKG was normal. I did feel a little shaky still so we took it slow and drove ourselves to the closest ER/ hospital – at Baycare Countryside.
In the ER
In the ER the staff took us in and did some basic EKG, bloodwork etc. Jolene was with me the whole time, and we held hands as we discussed. Around 9.30AM we started discussing a topic that caused me some distress, and I could feel the familiar chest tightness, and heart racing symptoms start again.
The ICD fired three times, and brought my heart rate back to sinus. I only felt two of the ICD jolts, but each threw my body in the air with the kick.
At this time the staff put me on an Amiodarone drip, and transferred me to the Intensive Cardiac Unit. The next 24h-48h were very stressful, filled with anxiety as I wondered how my heart would perform, whether I would get shocked again.
Medications
Now armed with the additional information we had about the chest pain, Dr Hazlitt – an electro-physiological cardiologist, together with Dr Bruno (internal medicine) put me on two different medications: 800 mg Amiodarone to keep the heart rate down, and avoid fibrillation, and 4 pills of Imdur (Isosorbide dinitrate), which is used to prevent chest pain (angina) caused by vasospasm. It works by relaxing and widening blood vessels so blood can flow more easily to the heart.
The flowchart of issues as we can best tell today is:
I was released from the hospital on Saturday September 23rd, starting another journey of recovery. Even though my body felt battered, and scarred – I felt like a survivor, some-one that had gone through some traumatic sh*t. I’m hoping this tale can be informative and helpful to others who are going through similar or other difficult circumstances. I will write more about the recovery and lessons in an upcoming post.
Peace & Love.
Oskar