I'm sure there's been something on here at some point in time about getting a sleep test performed but I had one last night and I can honestly say that sucked.
First of all, I have had two episodes of Atrial Fibulation over the past year. Both times required my heart to be shocked back into it's normal beat because the medicine given to me through an IV would not get it back into place itself. Pretty scary stuff for someone who's only 30 years old. The first time I was shocked I remember the entire thing. The doctor must not have given me enough sedation and let me tell you it feels like someone is pushing you through a 10 story building floor by floor. It didn't work the first time so he upped the voltage and tried again, thankfully the second time it worked. I asked him what kind of pressure he applied to my chest and he said it's similar to dropping a full keg off a 5 story building onto your chest. Needless to say for any of you that have had your heart shocked you know this but I had burn marks from the paddles on the back of my chest. Let me remind you there were no paddles applied to my back, only the front. Talk about painful....
The 2nd time it happened it was much less traumatic. I went to practice, did conditioning with the kids like I do sometimes and felt weird afterwards. For the next 16-18 hours I just felt weird and the finally early afternoon I decided to stop into the nurses office at school and she immediately sent me to the ER in Ankeny where they then sent me downtown DM. This time they used the right concoction and some sticky pads instead of the actual paddles.
So a month of so goes by and my heart doctor does some tests and tells me that a large amount of people who suffer from AFIB do so because they have sleep apnea. He orders me a split test to be performed at Mercy West Lakes in WDM. They hook you up to a bunch of different cords and then tell you to sleep. All while there's a camera on you, and a giant speaker system in your room that the doctor can hear every sound you make (Farts included, I had mexican for dinner after practice last night)
The whole thing was awkward and I don't possible know how someone could actually give them a good measure of how you sleep in a situation like that. Because it was a split test the doctor ordered that they hook me up to a CPAP machine in the middle of the night if I was showing signs of sleep apnea. I woke up without the machine on but she said I hardly slept at all from 2am-5:15am when she woke me up. Maybe that's because I was dreaming like crazy last night....
I was actually hoping that it was sleep apnea because now they'll have to do an echocardiogram to see whats wrong with my heart now that they've pretty much ruled out sleep apnea. The full results will come back in 10 days so I guess we'll wait and see. I wish you good luck if you have one of these tests coming up in the near future. Pray for a hot nurse to tuck you in and apply the sensors to your inner thighs.
First of all, I have had two episodes of Atrial Fibulation over the past year. Both times required my heart to be shocked back into it's normal beat because the medicine given to me through an IV would not get it back into place itself. Pretty scary stuff for someone who's only 30 years old. The first time I was shocked I remember the entire thing. The doctor must not have given me enough sedation and let me tell you it feels like someone is pushing you through a 10 story building floor by floor. It didn't work the first time so he upped the voltage and tried again, thankfully the second time it worked. I asked him what kind of pressure he applied to my chest and he said it's similar to dropping a full keg off a 5 story building onto your chest. Needless to say for any of you that have had your heart shocked you know this but I had burn marks from the paddles on the back of my chest. Let me remind you there were no paddles applied to my back, only the front. Talk about painful....
The 2nd time it happened it was much less traumatic. I went to practice, did conditioning with the kids like I do sometimes and felt weird afterwards. For the next 16-18 hours I just felt weird and the finally early afternoon I decided to stop into the nurses office at school and she immediately sent me to the ER in Ankeny where they then sent me downtown DM. This time they used the right concoction and some sticky pads instead of the actual paddles.
So a month of so goes by and my heart doctor does some tests and tells me that a large amount of people who suffer from AFIB do so because they have sleep apnea. He orders me a split test to be performed at Mercy West Lakes in WDM. They hook you up to a bunch of different cords and then tell you to sleep. All while there's a camera on you, and a giant speaker system in your room that the doctor can hear every sound you make (Farts included, I had mexican for dinner after practice last night)
The whole thing was awkward and I don't possible know how someone could actually give them a good measure of how you sleep in a situation like that. Because it was a split test the doctor ordered that they hook me up to a CPAP machine in the middle of the night if I was showing signs of sleep apnea. I woke up without the machine on but she said I hardly slept at all from 2am-5:15am when she woke me up. Maybe that's because I was dreaming like crazy last night....
I was actually hoping that it was sleep apnea because now they'll have to do an echocardiogram to see whats wrong with my heart now that they've pretty much ruled out sleep apnea. The full results will come back in 10 days so I guess we'll wait and see. I wish you good luck if you have one of these tests coming up in the near future. Pray for a hot nurse to tuck you in and apply the sensors to your inner thighs.
