I sat in my gynecologist’s office slightly nervous about a relatively invasive but brief procedure I was about to undergo. As with any time I visited the doctor, the white lab coat fear set in-and up goes my blood pressure (BP). The nurse comes in to take all my vitals; and it was running high, but also abnormally high for someone who was training at the time for what would have been her fifth marathon. My (now husband) boyfriend, Steven sat patiently waiting for me in the waiting roomblissfully unaware of my nerves and what was going on with myblood pressure.
The nurse waited to retake it for a few minutes, trying to induce calming thoughts while we sat there. Fast forward, it came down to a safer place to have the procedure, but still higher than she wanted to see. About 20 minutes later, all is done. Or so I think.
Procedure complete, I am walked out into the waiting room, where I am told to stay a few minutes as she wanted to take it again- just to be sure it had come down even further post procedure.
Well, it hadn’t and now she suggested seeing my Primary Care Physician or going to the ER “just to get it checked out.” As nothing was adding up, she said, I just want to be sure we keep you healthy. I let her know that I would call my Primary and she (knowing that I was likely going to shrug this off as I felt completely fine) said she would call her-and they would discuss the best course of action. She goes back into her office to call. Iam pretty sure its even higher now, as I am even more nervous for what could be wrong.
5 minutes later, we are being told there is a consensual agreement I should get to the ER “just to get it checked out.” This (along with Steven being there) became a big blessing for me, because you can bet I would have driven myself home thinking this was “just a fluke.”
We pull up to the Portsmouth ER at around 5pm sometime in late Summer 2016 and there I sat wondering how on Earth an otherwise healthy 36 year old was sitting here. I cried as I was hooked up to all the machines (heart rate, blood pressure, EKG)and now my heart was racing a bit out of nerves… and there was my BP- now at 200/100. If you don’t know what that means (pay attention), this is something classified as Grade 3 Hypertension and is very dangerous.
He stays with me the whole time, holding my hand. I realized something about human touch that day. Not only did my BP go down (not enough, but it went down), but my beats per minute did-when we hugged or when he put his hand on my chest to calm me- it was incredible to see happening in real time. Fast forward to 4 hours and no real movement to my BP later, the doctor gives me Lisinopril (blood pressure medicine). I now have the lowest dose of BP meds they can give, it comes down to a safe level and I am released. With a follow up already scheduled to meet the cardiologist who had been assigned my case (she is wonderful, by the way) and a laundry list of tests that I would undergo in the coming weeks to understand the WHY, we left and I was exhausted and still a bit confused.
It started to make sense to me, as I learned something else that night. Not only did I sleep better than I had in AS LONG AS I COULD REMEMBER, I also felt more relaxed. And here is where the real reflections that continued over the next several weeks started- a few of them went as follows:
• one time, during an 8-mile run (which should have been relatively easy for me), I had to walk as my chest felt tight. I brushed it off as I thought it had to be just because I was over-heated or wasn’t training enough.
• I felt anxious all the time and I had always chalked it up to a high-stress job. I never realized that wasn’t “actually”normal- also a fun fact I learned is that anxiety is a byproduct of high blood pressure.
And then, post meeting my cardiologist, it was onto all the tests to try and find the cause. 3 Day EKG, sonogram of my liver and kidneys, echo and echo stress test-all which ultimately led to an MRI.
First came the frustration.
I remember looking down at the EKG I had to wear for 3 days, and I just started to cry. How did I go from not thinking I was perfectly healthy, to THIS? Walking around with electrodes taped all over my chest and a carrying pack which was recording everything. I felt defeated.
Then came the fear.
After all other organs showed perfectly normal functioning, it was time to look at my heart. I aced the echo stress test. If you don’t know what this is, you are basically hooked up to a heart rate monitor as you are on a treadmill which increases in incline and speed gradually-it is measuring how well your heart reacts when it is stressed. I can’t remember the exact minutes, but the incline and speed were both pretty high. And my heart even recovered normally after that amount of work. What WASN’T normal, when looking at my heart, was the how enlarged my aortic valve was, causing a slow leak. I could see the concern on the technician’s face, as he pointed to the screen to show the doctor. He would then take a closer look at the recorded results and order an MRI to confirm the measure of how enlarged it was with a clearer picture.
And then the relief.
Months after all the tests and follow-ups, my cardiologist confirmed that, while enlarged, I was still in a “safe” zone where I wouldn’t need to have it replaced or have a sleeve put over it (both of which she talked about as if they were the most common procedures in heart medicine). She did want a second opinion, so I also heard the same from my second cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He said because we caught this when we did, I could potentially live a long and healthy life with it just as it is. I was told no more marathons (that made me both sad and glad for very different reasons lol), and we laughed that he wasn’t used to advising his patients to exercise LESS. I have tests done each year to make sure its stable-and very luckily, 6 years later, all is still stable.
I still cry (yes, I know-a lot of crying here) when I tell this story, when I think of all of the “what if’s”… What if I had ran that marathon? Would I have even made it TO the marathon? I do try to share it whenever I can, and that is why I became a Volunteer for the American Heart Association-their work has led to so many advancements in heart medicine and I can attribute why I am here to some of them (along with the very important people I mentioned in this story).
If I can change just one person’s life-give them a piece of my heart to save theirs. Then I know that is on very important purpose for the time I am blessed to spend here on this Earth.