A&E fiasco, palpitations, heart attack, bigeminy beats, back home for dinner.

[Gdav]

Hi gang,

Just had to put this one down for the historical record.

Friday telephone appointment with cardio rehabilitation ( I have never seen anyone since leaving cardiology ward, only phone calls) conversation as normal except I had been having isolated missed heartbeat events, maybe 3 or 4 ocassions so was told if I were to have this happen for longer than an hour then to call paramedics.

Saturday, 10.30am, start having palpitations, heart seemed to be beating like an engine with a spark plug removed. At 11.45am I told Mrs D to put her driving shoes on ( joke) we were off for a trip to the local brand new hospital, opened Nov 2020. ( remain nameless)

Arrived at emergency department at 12.05pm, book in saying I had replacement aortic valve, root reconstruction and bypass surgery 12 weeks ago and I have had palpitations for over an hour and had been advised to go to hospital.

Jump 2.5 hours later and I am called in for triage, nurse says " so you recently had bowel surgery" no I said, and explained the situation again. What follows is ECG, wait 30 minutes, out in waiting room with no available seating left because the place has 20 more people waiting than seats in there, followed by another ECG 30 minutes later, followed by another wait for 15 minutes followed by this....

On call junior Dr, " I apologise in advance if not but I am treating you as I think you have had a heart attack. "

1st thoughts going through my head, my chest was opened not 3 months ago and all the bits that didn't work were removed, replaced or repaired and I'm expected to believe I have had a heart attack !!!!

Junior Doc, " have this 300mg asprin" I told him I wouldn't need aspirin as I am on wafarin for life ( however short) and the aspirin would mix up my levels. He says don't worry about that we can sort that later??

Off I go into a wheelchair and into the majors section of the emergency ward. I have bloods taken for tropium levels and hitched to the monitors. This is when it shows a bigeminy beating, double beat of the heart for a period of time.

Jump forward to 7.30pm, 7 and a half hours with a mask on, and thankfully the evening ED registrar is a ex cardiology registrar who knew his stuff. He came in and said my 1st blood tropium level was perfect, he would guarantee the 2nd would be the same, and I definitely hadn't had an heart attack, especially as I was not presenting any pain symptoms and after he checked my ECG,s from earlier he would discharge me, if I was happy to !!! To say I didn't give him chance to say anymore was an understatement.

He then went on to say he believed the junior ED doc had been a bit overzealous and he would have not diagnosed a heart attack, especially in someone who had just been out of open heart surgery, " it would be like winning the lottery and then winning the lottery again the following week " basically saying that I would be the unluckiest person in the world to have that happen to me.

9.35pm return to home, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.

Game over....

Sorry guys I just had to get that off my chest ( literally)

Postscript... starting to pee a little blood today, normal when my wafarin level is high.... wonder why??? Oh yeah because I had to take aspirin a few days ago!!!!!

Gary ( living the dream)

[Cliff_G]

As if deciding to go to A&E is not worrying enough. Glad you got seen properly in the end, maybe the new hospital is having teething troubles. I wouldn't have been happy, either. And good on you for standing your ground.

Sounds like a burst of AF to me, can take the heart a little while to settle after what you've had. Did it calm down and go back to normal in the hospital?

[Gdav in reply to Cliff_G]

Thanks for the reply Cliff, yes it became intermittent and, as is always the way, it never occurred when I was wired to the ECG.By the end of the evening and, if you can imagine, me lying there, in what can only be described as a heart patients idea of heaven, glued to the heart rate, BP and Resps monitor for about 3 hours. I've never felt so at peace staring at all my vitals pinging away happily!!!

I have finally managed to convince cardio-rehab to get me in this Friday for a fitness test. This I hope will mean me being wired up and see if it can produce these bigeminy beat things.

[Nettekin]

Hi Gary. You couldn't make it up could you? Your story is both amusing and horrifying. Pleased your outcome was ok and hope all goes well for you in the future. X

[Gdav in reply to Nettekin]

Thanks Nett,

As you quite rightly say, it is both amusing and horrific in equal measure. This may be the only time I will be diagnosed a heart attack in the afternoon and back home in time to watch the news in the evening.

[Nettekin in reply to Gdav]

I sometimes wonder if a&e have a diagnosis in mind before they examine all the symptoms? Also, the doctors could do a lot worse than listen to the patient - we are after all experts in our own experiences. After a ha and 2 stents in 2019, I was blue lighted to a&e in March 2020 with chest pain again. No sign of a heart attack, diagnosed with costochondritis. I tried to explain that my blood pressure was way too low for me, but simply congratulated on the numbers! Long story short, I had an infected gall bladder and my body was going into toxic shock. All sorted in the end, gallbladder removed and home just as covid struck. It has shown me that in future I need to be more confident in my dealings with doctors, but if course when you are in pain and frightened it is difficult. X

[080311]

Morning Gary

Read your post with sheer disbelief, though at one point didn’t know wether to laugh or cry! I had Aortic valve replaced 4 years ago and so far so good, but if this happened to me I would have been so scared. Thinking had my heart mended to then have a heart attack 12 weeks later!

Wishing you a great recovery, as I have said 4 years on and life is good.

Best wishes Pauline

[Gdav in reply to 080311]

It is always Really pleasing to hear from someone like yourself, Pauline, who has had the same a long time ago. It does give me faith that it all comes right in the end.I was one of the unlucky ones, where I was asymptomatic with the condition and am not at that level where I was prior to surgery, let alone better.

[080311 in reply to Gdav]

12 weeks really isn’t very long from your op, it does take time to get our stamina back. Because cardio rehab isn’t up and running properly things like that will be more difficult for you. But doing your exercises is vital. Keep doing your breathing exercises as well I called them huffing and puffing. Remember your lungs took a hit as well as your heart. When we are on bypass the lungs collapse so we have to help them get all those little pockets filled out again. You will get there just not as quickly as we think we should 😂

Best wishes Pauline

[Hidden]

Complete fiasco! Two thoughts.

With your recent complex cardiac surgery, I would have expected your first contact on arrival at the hospital to have been with the cardiothoracic team. Your consultant won’t be happy and needs to be advised about what is essentially a systems b****s up.

A monitor like Kardia or similar would have allowed you to email a rhythm strip showing the bigemini, to the cardiology team in conjunction with your phone call. This might have made a trip to hospital unnecessary.

[Gdav in reply to Hidden]

On hindsight, I agree completely, although in the area of the UK I live the cardiology hospital is 20 odd miles from this A&E hospital and literally unobtainable on a weekend, for some reason them being a "green zone" for Covid also applies to there telephone system. As for monitors, my wife would consider my BP machine and samsung phone pulse health meter which I did, early post surgery, fixate on checking every 2 to 3 minutes 😀😉 enough monitoring for me to leave time for me to eat my meals and sleep !!

I also agree with Nette, although the ED doctors are up against it, I saw that 1st hand on the weekend, they need to have a bit more lateral thinking and not to automatically resort to medical school processing of an ECG "not looking as it should normally "( I did say at the time to him, my ECG will never look like a normal one due to the replaced /repaired and refurbished parts added to my heart)

I did genuinely consider giving feedback to the hospital but how can I do that when, whatever the situation, they were only trying to help me. Add to that my forever gratefulness, in general , to the guys who have fixed my heart, I thought maybe this forum was a way of letting others know and perhaps avoid the issues I had?

[Spangle14]

Wow, what a fiasco. Which hospital is this, so I can make a note never to go there!