At 11 years old I was diagnosed with Wolfe Parkinson White
Syndrome after having shortness of breath and extreme pain and discomfort in my
chest while playing baseball. Basically WPW is a heart condition in which there
is a short circuit in the wiring of the heart which causing rapid heart rate
after minimal physical exercise. The short term solution to this problem was a
prescribed drug called atenolol which regulated my heart rate so that I could
continue to be the energetic kid I had always been growing up. While the
medicine helped, it was only a temporary fix and I would soon have heart
surgery. This surgery was not a complete success because they could not reach
all the malfunctioning fibers in my heart with possibly hurting me to a point
of no recovery. I began to have less problems with my heart and the medicine
was doing just fine until we decide that surgery in later years would be
necessary. Three years and many orange prescription bottles later my heart was
still under control with a few very rare episodes. Until this one summer night,
I had never realized how serious and life threatening my condition was. I was
with a friend with plans of going to the mall as most kids my age did on the
weekend. We got dropped off near the mall and at one point had to run across
the street to avoid traffic. I would regret this 15 foot sprint more than
anything. My heart began to try to escape my chest as if it had been trapped in
a dark room years when someone teased it with an open door only to be slammed
in its face. As a kid I always had a high tolerance for pain so the next 2
hours I spent in silent agony hoping the pain would reside. As I was dropped
off at home I gave it an entire hour before I even mentioned to my Mom that
anything was wrong until I couldn’t take it anymore. She began to try quick
tricks to flip the switch on my heart back to normality such as telling me to
bear down and putting a cold rag on my neck. Four hours had passed after I
jaywalked across that street and my heart was still pumping at 180 beats per
minute. I refused to go to the ER because I was scared of what they might do to
me. I had a great fear of not knowing what might happen to me. My heart could
only keep supplying blood at such a fast rate for so long until it could get
all the blood to the specific place it need to go. The first place that took a
toll was my head as I began to pass out. This was the deciding factor that I
must go to the ER. The nurses wheeled me to the operating room as my vision
faded in and out and I was set up with an IV as fast as possible. They
immediately asked if I was ready, which was a scary question considering I had
no idea the feeling that would overtake me. I felt like I was teleported to
the top of a roller coaster just before the drop as my heart went from 180 to
35 beats and back to a normal 70 in the matter of a few seconds. Just like that
I was feeling like my normal self again. This was the first of many episodes I
would have before I ultimately had my second surgery this past year which was a
success.
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