Bringin work home with me.

I found it rather surreal this morning when I came home from working on a cardiac floor all night and awakened my Honeybunch to have him sit up and bed and tell me that his "heart feels weird".  

He was having palpitations, and as I pressed my ear to his chest I heard his heart beating irregularly and rapidly.  When it did not pass after a couple minutes, I said that I thought we should go to the ER.  He agreed, and went to take an aspirin (he has Factor V Leiden, which makes him more at risk to develop blood clots).  As he bent to drink from the faucet, the palpitations vanished, and upon listening to his heart I found it pulsing out its usual slow, steady drumbeat.  At first I was relieved, but the suddenness with which the rapid irregular nature of the rhythm went away made it even more weird.  The concerns lingered and we went to the ER to have him checked out.

The telemetry monitor wanted to make him look like a liar, and he sat in the cot for four hours with a perfect sinus waveform bouncing across the screen. 

It was really, really strange to be on both sides of the situation in one morning.

I'm a worry-wort and I know it.  I'm that family member who all nurses wish didn't exist... works in healthcare, watching every move you make, asking questions, suggesting theories, anxiously glued to the bedside.  I was irritated that no one else seemed concerned about the Factor V Leiden history in combination with symptoms that sounded VERY much to me like paroxysmal atrial fibrillation.  Hello thrombus?? 

Finally, doc comes back with news.  Blood work is fine, chest x-ray is fine, D-Dimer (a blood test used to screen for clots) is within normal limits. Follow up with your PCP and avoid caffeine, they say.

Relieved, but still unsettled.  Wishing I had a homemade EKG machine at the ready for if/when it happens again.  Honeybunch thinks that he can make one pretty easily, which I find hilariously amusing. 

Either way, I'm likely to be even more patient and sympathetic towards anxious family members than usual at work tonight.