Our Heartbeats are the Soundtrack to our Lives

Beat by Beat

Do you ever listen to the beating of your heart?  The relentless chugging of your engine – valves opening and closing, ventricles ejecting blood, arteries carrying oxygen-rich blood to perfuse your body and brain. It’s a delicately orchestrated dance that continues day and night, reliably keeping you alive without the effort of conscious thought.

Sometimes the conductor misses a beat, or the kettle drum pounds too hard.  Maybe the piccolo starts a wild staccato that disrupts the entire chorus.  In those moments you might feel a little dizzy, short of breath, or even pass out.  Usually, you just dismiss it as a hiccup and carry on.

Some of us have lived with a drunk conductor most of our lives and don’t really notice when he lets the beat drop because that’s part of the funkadelic rhythm of our lives.  When the piccolo tweets us into atrial fibrillation or the drums pound too hard and fast, we sit down and take a moment, then resume our day like nothing unusual happened. 

After my heart transplant, I got a new conductor, and this one played by the book, keeping the entire band marching in rhythm.  But I think she’s been hitting the bottle lately because I can feel the jazz section riffing on occasion. 

Last week, my husband and I flew down to Nashville to see the transplant team at Vanderbilt to check on the plumbing and electrical in my gifted heart.  The findings were not spectacular, but better than I had expected.

Five years ago, I was diagnosed with Coronary Artery Vasculopathy (CAV).  CAV is similar to the hardening of the arteries in a normal heart, except it isn’t fatty plaque deposits but something more akin to scar tissue.  The doctors started me on Everolimus which is a chemotherapy drug that has been found to help prevent or slow the progression of CAV.

When the CAV was first discovered, I had a partial blockage in one of the main arteries in my heart. Everolimus makes me sick every day.  I take my meds at lunch then I’m pretty useless until dinner, curled up on the couch gutting it out.  I’ve scheduled my evening dose for bedtime so I can sleep through those side effects.

Last year, I begged to take a vacation from my meds, and was allowed to stop taking Everolimus for three months since my condition had remained stable for four years.  Last October, I returned to Vanderbilt for a Left Heart Catheterization to check on the status of the CAV.  Doctors found that the original artery remained the same, but a second artery had developed a blockage even larger than the first, although it was just below the threshold to qualify for a stent.

I instantly regretted my decision to take a break from the drug, regardless of how sick it made me.  The doctors and I agreed that I would resume taking Everolimus at my previous dose. At my mid-year appointment in April, the doctor recommended I have Cardiac MRI to look at the smaller vessels in my heart.  It was CAV in the small vessels that ended my previous heart transplant.

Say "Hello" to my little friend.

Last week was that appointment.  Stripping out of my street clothes and into a special metal-free hospital gown, I answered the routine questions about any devices in my body.  The pacemaker which kept my original heart beating is long gone, but a piece of catheter remains embedded in my vein.  It is safe for an MRI.

Before they slid me into the device, one of the technicians asked for a music preference for the headphones I wore to reduce the noise of the machine’s pinging.

“Ozzy or Black Sabbath,” I replied.  The technician’s face registered a hint of surprise, so I was glad I didn’t request Slipknot.   I look more like I’m going to bake cookies than listen to heavy metal.  What they tuned to was classic rock, but the station did play an Ozzy song in the mix.

The results of the test are generally good, otherwise referred to as “grossly normal.”  (Being normal is kind of gross, isn’t it?)  The only negative was the inability to determine my Cardiac Flow Reserve (CFR) because my heart developed an arrythmia when the drug to induce the stress portion of the test was injected into the IV.  It was not an enjoyable experience to lie flat on my back, unable to move in that tiny tube, while the band conductor went on a full-on bender and instructed the band to play “March of the Gladiators” at double time. 

That misbehavior earned me a wearable cardiac monitor for the next two weeks.  I’m only on day five and it’s driving me insane.  The patches irritate my skin, and the batteries don’t hold a charge long enough. By the time the first battery goes dead, the one on the charger has only regenerated half of its juice.  I don’t know if it’s the batteries or the charger, but I can only wear the monitor for half the day before both batteries are dead.  Monday morning will be time for a phone call.

The point of this long-winded missive is that I’m not dead yet and not expected to be there anytime soon.  At least, not as long as my driving doesn’t catch up to me. In the meantime, I’m going to make the most of every day – smell the roses, eat the chocolate, pet all the dogs.  And listen to some Black Sabbath.

Don’t take a single moment for granted.  Today is the only day you’ve got.  Make it a good one.

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