Hi Folks, just when I thought my PVCs were getting a lot better, I had a bad episode this past tuesday and ended up taking an ambulance ride to an ER. very embarassing. I've been through days of bigeminy and even some tachy but never went tot he ER for it.
here's what happened. I exercised like I normally do at work during lunch. I did my brisk walk then i climb stairs at a brisk pace. Climbing the stairs get's my heart rate up to about 155 by the 7th floor. I know this becuase I wear a pulse meter. I've been doing this 3x per week for about a month. FOr some odd reason this day I peaked at 170.
So I get done and head back to my office. I didn't cool down in any way. When I sat down I threw a hard PVC, I was at about 140 when it hit. I have a history of panic (though none in more than about 8 years or so). So this PVC made me look at my HRM and I'm thinking good god I hope I don't end up with this SVT or VT I keep reading about. then I see it climb to 150. I really get freaked out. I see it hit 160 so I get up and start walking around but I'm in pure panic at this point. I hold it at 160 for some time while I walk around. I walk into the bathroom and had no color at all. Panic a bit more, hands go tingly.
I walk back to my office then feel what I think was a salvo of PVCs. Never had that before. I couldn't even count how many.
I look down at my HRM and it says 254. oh ****, I'm going to die! So I walk into the guy's office next door and tell him I need help, call 911. He did. Then I start talking to people and start to feel better, next time I check, HRM was down to 137. No more PVCs. This all hapened in the span of about 2 minutes. The ramp up in HR took about 1 minute. The salvo of PVCs was about 5 seconds long.
The 911 operator is still on the phone and I'm telling them to forget it, I'm OK. By then it's too late and I end up in the ER. I knew there was nothing they could do in the ER for me but it was too late. Arriving in the ER I was at 130 bpm, NSR the entire time (5 hours about). It took the 5 hours to get my hr back down to the 90s or so, they didn't give me any meds. I'm usually 60. All my blood work was normal. Nurse said she didn't see any PVCs and I knew this already. Today I'm finally back to normal rythym-wise.
I've been fine since, I've had isloated PVCs that scare me and I get a bit sinus tachy but I settle down.
going to talk to my cardiologist tomorrow.
This year for the PVCs, I've had two different cardiac workups complete with stress, echos, nuke stress, ekgs, and a cardiac MRI. Everything is normal.
I refuse to exercise at this point.
Can anyone with expereince tell me what they think that was? Was it some sort of VT or did I just panic myself with an already high exercise pulse that just went through the roof?
Thanks in advance for any help/advise. :-)