The Tale of the Heart Condition

Many of you have sent me emails asking about my heart–so I wanted to write a post to update everyone.

I have what is called Wolff-Parkinson White Syndrome (WPW for short), which is something that I was apparently born with, but I didn’t have any symptoms of until I graduated from High School.

Here is some information according to Cleveland Clinic:

Normally, the heartbeat begins at the SA node, located in your right atrium. When the SA node fires, electrical activity spreads through the right and left atria, causing them to contract. The impulses travel to the AV node, which is the bridge that allows the impulses to go from the atria to the ventricles. The impulse then travels through the walls of the ventricles, causing them to contract. The heart’s regular pattern of electrical impulses causes the heart to fill with blood and contract in a normal fashion.

WPW is a form of supraventricular tachycardia (fast heart rate originating above the ventricles).

When you have WPW, along with your normal conduction pathway, you have extra pathways called accessory pathways. They look like normal heart muscle, but they conduct impulses faster than normal and conduct impulses in both directions.

The impulses travel through the extra pathway (short cut) as well as the normal AV-HIS Purkinje system. The impulses can travel around the heart very quickly, in a circular pattern, causing the heart to beat unusually fast. This is called re-entry tachycardia. The greatest concern for people with WPW is the possibility of having atrial fibrillation with a fast ventricular response that worsens to ventricular fibrillation, a life-threatening arrhythmia.

If you look at the two pictures below, the one on the right is what would happen when my extra electrical pathway was stimulated and then sent my heart into a horribly fast, circular pattern.

I have had hundreds of tachycardia episodes in the past ten years. Most of them lasting thirty minutes or less. Usually I get pretty lightheaded and sit down and rest until it goes away. It happened frequently on the volleyball court when I played in college, but this was before I knew what it was, so I just continued playing thinking that it was just my excitement during the game. Sometimes it just started happening out of the clear blue, when I was doing nothing strenuous that might explain why my heart suddenly started going into tachycardia.

I have had to go to the hospital for it three times. . . all when I was pregnant. The worst of it was when I was pregnant with Brayden and I had an episode that lasted for over four hours. James finally called 911, and an ambulance took me to the hospital, where I stayed over night and they finally diagnosed me with WPW. When I was pregnant with Carter, we went in once after another four hour episode, and when we got to ER my heart rate was over 220 beats per minute.

I think it was at that point that we decided we really should do something about it before something terrible happened. So, my option was to have something called a Radio Frequency Catheter Ablation. Here’s some info, again from Cleveland Clinic’s Website:

Catheter ablation is a type of treatment for cardiac arrhythmias. During ablation, a doctor inserts a catheter (thin, flexible tube) into the heart. A special machine delivers energy through the catheter to tiny areas of the heart muscle that cause the abnormal heart rhythm. This energy “disconnects” the pathway of the abnormal rhythm.

The ablation procedure also can be used to disconnect the electrical pathway between the upper chambers (atria) and lower chambers (ventricles) of the heart. The type of ablation performed depends upon the type of arrhythmia. The procedure steps:

The doctor will insert several catheters through a small incision into a large blood vessel (in your groin, neck or arm, depending on the type of ablation procedure being performed). Sometimes, it may be necessary to use both an artery and a vein.
A transducer is inserted through one of the catheters so intracardiac ultrasound can be performed during the procedure. The ultrasound allows the doctor to view the structures of the heart on an external monitor.
The catheters will be advanced through the blood vessels to your heart. After the catheters are in place, the doctor looks at a monitor to assess your heart’s conduction system.
The doctor then uses a pacemaker-like device to send electrical impulses to the heart to increase the heart rate. If your arrhythmia occurs during the procedure, the nurse will ask you to describe the symptoms you feel.
The doctor uses the catheters to locate the area or areas where the arrhythmia is originating. Once the area is located, energy is applied through the catheter to stop the abnormal impulses.
Once the ablation is complete, the electrophysiologist uses monitoring devices to observe the electrical signals in the heart to ensure that the abnormal rhythm was corrected.

And there you have it! And now I am home, and recovering. The people at Strong were wonderful. My procedure was about 3 1/2 hours, most of which I don’t remember. I had to stay overnight until this morning. The worry about needing a pacemaker if the ablation went wrong is now over, and hopefully I was be tachycardia free forevermore! So now I have to take it easy for a few days and then things will hopefully we back to normal.

Praise the Lord!!

EST. 2009