Finding the 1 screw missing from my all metal Hegel H200 remote while cleaning under my couch cushions for the first time in years before I sucked it into the vacuum....
@unclewilbur, I am assuming that you are on medicare (I just started on it a year ago, and I still don't know all the ins and outs) but if you already have a cardiologist, I'd say try to schedule an ECG and have him interpret it. I am going from memory on this (I can get the textbook out in a bit) but as I recall, if it is a PVC, that is another rhythm originating somewhere other than the SA node and what happens if I recall correctly is it is one signal for a heart beat from somewhere other than the SA node landing on top of the SA node signal (but I will look that up). What I do remember for sure is that this is another generally benign rhythm unless you get too many directly in a row (I'll look up how many) because that can turn into v-tach. As far as A-fib, that's a bit of a different animal, and my understanding is that strokes are one of the big risks as the atrium is fibrillating which is a recipe for potential clots to form. I would also think that fibrillating atria wouldn't be properly (completely) emptying into the ventricles that therefore the output (also known as cardiac output/CO) from the ventricles would be reduced and that this could result in certain physiological sensations and possibly an increased heart rate as maybe the response to decreased CO. I do know that when one's blood pressure drops (as in one of the early stages of shock) the heart rate elevates as a response to compensate.
But don't take anything I type very seriously--I am NOT at all qualified on this subject and the best thing to do is to get in to see a cardiologist.
Anyway, I hope you're ok!!!
Thank you for the good thoughts. Generally I feel okay most of the time, but having seen what happens when someone's heart ceases to produce an adequate pulse has made the concept seem real to me, and in all honesty, I have not completely come to terms with it on a personal level. Although sooner or later it is inevitable for all of us.
Best thoughts back at you, and talk to your PCP and or cardiologist.
That is a very good description of what my heart does. But after the pause there is often a rush of beats as if it’s trying to catch up! And when it’s bad, the rhythm doesn’t normalize for hours.
I think my heart is in a more advanced stage of a-fibulation, or arrhythmia though.
. . . what I used to describe happiness as being was: firing up the charcoal grill and pounding a ice cold beer while the coals started burning down and then singeing a 2" thick slab of New York strip and washing down that blue-rare piece of beef with some more ice cold beers. It has been at least a few years since I have done that.
You’ve used a lot of terms and acronymacronyms that I don’t know. I’ll have to do some googling. I think you wrote that you were a nurse? So you’re a smarty pants with medical terms! 😁
I suppose that I am, @unclewilbur; I used to take a perverse pride in writing my nursing notes in a form that only a nurse or doc could interpret. I always figured maybe I’d throw the lawyers off in case I ever got sued. But I guarantee you that this technique wouldn’t work. Anyway, I’ll save you the google, NSR=normal sinus rhythm which is what we all want, v-tach is ventricular tachycardia which, if it devolves to pulseless v-tach, is a bad thing (lethal) and usually if not always devolves into v-fib which is ventricular fibrillation which is always lethal unless corrected (and v-tach and v-fib are the only two rhythms that the text books say are shockable, but since I’ve never been a glory nurse, I only know what the textbook says, so I do not know what they might actually try in the ED or CCU). (But by the text books, flatline, aka asystole, is NOT shockable, contrary to what many of the shows on TV show.) (And the battery operated AED will only let the user shock v-tach or v-fib, so if a doc was going to try to shock a flatline, it would have to be with the paddles.) Anyway, premature ventricular contractions are PVCs and my understanding is that they show up on a rhythm strip as an upside down QRS complex and I had always THOUGHT that they came off as a skipped beat when listening with a steth, but maybe I was wrong, because the ED doc said I was perfect (which I do not believe). SVTs are supra ventricular tachycardia which is a junctional rhythm meaning that it starts somewhere (I believe) above the ventricles and NOT in the sino-atrial node (SA node) which is the normal pacemaker for the heart. After typing all of this, keep in mind that I was never a glory nurse and I NEVER had a patient on a monitor (except in school) so basically this is, for me, all theoretical I am passing on. Except for the few times I have administered CPR, and in those instances there was something going on that had resulted in cardiac arrest (a patient in pulseless v-tach is NOT theoretical nor in v-fib). Anyway, if I left any of the acronyms I love to use out, let me know and I’ll elaborate on those as well.
@gano, I think that’s what the ED doc was thinking, and maybe my VA doc also. My VA doc would listen to my heart with his steth and tell me it sounded perfect. I told him it was like "the dancing frog," which was that old cartoon about a guy that had a frog that would tap dance when they were alone, but when he brought it out in public to show off, it just sat there. I may, in fact, be a hypochondriac, but it is honestly not that I want something to be wrong with my heart, I actually really and truly want my heart to operate within the parameters of a normal rhythm, and regardless of what the docs have told me, I know what " lub-dub/lub-dub/lub-dub [abrupt pause] lub-dub/lub-dub. . . ." sounds like. But in all honesty, I’d rather be a hypochondriac than experiencing an arrythmia, so if it is the former, I can happily live with that.
You’ve used a lot of terms and acronymacronyms that I don’t know. I’ll have to do some googling. I think you wrote that you were a nurse? So you’re a smarty pants with medical terms! 😁
Some of these arrhythmia types can be nasty and just mess up the heartbeat to a point of no return
Yup. If you go into V-tach and then V-fib, if you are not in the right place and around the right people, that is generally the end of the line. And even if you are (around the right people in the right place) it is still a crap shoot.
No, @unclewilbur, the 10-lead they ran at the time of the stress test showed a perfect NSR. A bit over a year later, I felt as if I was having palpations and I could actually take my own radial pulse and feel a skipped beat and confirm that by listening with my steth, and I initially thought of PVCs. I called the VA and they said they would pay for me to go to the ED and get checked, and there they ran a 12-lead for a while and told me it was perfect . . . no A-fib or PVCs or anything else. I said, "But doc, I can check my pulse and feel a skipped beat intermittently," and the ED doc said, "You want my advice?" And I was like, "Of course I do!" He said, "Quit checking your pulse!" Anyway, whatever I was experiencing was not happening when I was hooked up to the monitor.
After that the VA ordered a monitor for me to wear for a few weeks, and the results came back as occasional runs of SVT, which is a junctional rhythm but generally benign. However, I do remember from the classroom that V-tach (which is "usually" NOT a benign rhythm) usually devolves from a junctional rhythm.
Anyway, I am still here, but as I typed previously in this thread, I do not have a death wish, and most days when I wake up, I’d like to live until at least the next day.
About three and a half years ago I was experiencing some intermittent sensations in my chest that felt a bit strange, so I convinced my VA doc to write an order for a cardiac stress test. The results did not indicate blockages, and regardless of that not being definitive of good coronary health, at the time it made me happy.
I went on a bike ride yesterday and there was a construction on my planned route. I had to get around it. I tried a shortcut and got lost. I ended up biking 1 hour and 10 minutes, a third of it uphill. I was spitting my lungs out. Then I felt like a champ for exercising that much, Like it was intentional! In my over the hill age. That was happiness (for a minute)
Going way back, I used to live like I had a death wish, and although I didn't (have a death wish), I am surprised that I didn't screw up and actually do something that wound up killing me. Therefore, I guess happiness is: looking back on the years that have followed since my misguided youth and being thankful for those years, because, all and all, they weren't too bad.
- A cd player we’ve got that the center disc disappeared into our local void.
Said disc is the part that keeps the cd centered in play.
No clue as to where it went, and that it could come loose.
-When spouse and I were yet to be more than ’interested’ in each other, shared a
vaca to Canada. Stayed at a nice hotel there, enjoying the area and each other.
One amours’ morning, the maid came in when we’d just finished a ’wild thing’ sess... Vaguely similar to your car interrupt, certainly cheaper, but just as much of a moment after the fact... (No, the maid bailed...’damn" *L*)
-Very long ago, hitchhiking back home one evening, got picked up by a guy in his VDub bus...puttering on, he looks at me and yells !" just before a loud bang that flipped the bus into 3.5 rolls. Driver was belted, I was not. Bus lying on my side, feet on the seat, shoulders on roof, left hand on visor, right hand on shattered window...
"You OK?!" from the driver, hanging from his belt.... Well, seems so, let’s get out...
Accomplished by climbing up ’n out his side, which is now the ’upside’...
End of the van looked like a giant pliers had pinched the tail into a V.
Nearby neighborhooders *tsk tsked*, "...happens ’bout once a month someone runs the stop signs.." (We hadn’t..).
PD came, took everyone’s story, got to me...noted name, the etc.
"..and you’re...?"
One very lucky ass hitchhiker...free to continue that?
*Shrug* "Sure...hope you luck holds..."
Me? Bruised a little...a small cut in the palm of my right hand.
...and this story.
Nobody hurt but 2 cars thrashed...and still a long way home to go.
@unclewilburyour stories are believable and amazing. And I agree, if I survived it, it's not sad overall, and has an uplifting angle :) Just discussing it makes me feel lucky.
I think I know what you mean, but you’re still alive.
Since the subject is "Happiness is" it helps to find a positive ending for a disastrous story.
For example, when I was about 6 or 7 years old we had a serious car accident. We slid off an icy road, and down a long hill toward a big lake where we probably would have drowned in ice water. But instead, we bounced off a tree, and crashed into a nice lake cottage. We went all the way through the wall, and were looking at a man and his wife, in bed on the other side of the room!
They were shocked upright in bed with jaws hanging wide open, and horror in their eyes. And we were looking back at them with the same horror!
So, in this story, happiness is narrowly avoiding a drowning death, by bouncing off a tree, crashing into a house, and meeting a nice couple in bed on the other side of the room!
PS... Just in case these stories seem hard to believe, I promise they are all completely true. I’m pretty sure I’ve had a very unusual life!
Happiness is sheltering in Fort Jefferson during a category 3 hurricane, and being one step away from the blue plasma of a lightning strike that bolted out of the ceiling, and missed me by ten inches!
...installing the AKITIKA pre-amp into the third system and being rewarded with instant music, and no smoke...
or finding a Tascam 112 MK II in a thrift store (I know..Cassettes? Right?)
or finding a VG+ Whalefeathers in the used book store at the antique mall for literally a small fraction of its value. (All the records here are two bucks, the books as marked...)
Did you find the screw to my frontal lobe it's missing and I have no impulse inhibition.the frontal lobe gets to doing many interesting things when my screw is gone to hold it together.that should get the party going 🤔.
Happiness is being in the cockpit of your sailboat, many miles from nowhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, with engine problems, cleaning the carburater jets to your engine with carb-cleaner, lighting your hands on fire as you light a cigarette, reacting to fire by throwing the tiny little carburater jet a hundred feet into the air!
...And hearing the tiny little carburater jet land in the dinghy that is tied up 15 feet behind the sailboat! 😀
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