Athlete's Heart
by Shay Seaborne
Severe abdominal pain, vomiting, dripping cold sweat, and numbness in my arms sent me to the ER early one Saturday morning in October of 2005. Although I was obviously alive and coherent, the ambulance crew could not detect a pulse and their monitor could not determine my blood pressure. Even my carotid artery offered no clue to my heart rate. The hospital's equipment did no better for some time; the automatic PB cuff kept resetting iself, searching for enough input to register. Still, since the pain had subsided to a large degree, I was talking and making jokes, much to the surprise of the EMTs in attendance. Finally, the monitor gave us a number: 64/40 and 40 bpm. The medical staff shook their heads in disbelief. They could not understand how I could be conscious and coherent with numbers like that.
After some blood tests and ultrasound, the diagnosis was gall stones, with one lodged in the common gall duct, backing up bile into the liver--which, the doctor said, is dangerous. I was admitted to the hospital and scheduled for an endoscopic procedure in the morning. The doctor said that would remove the blockage, and that I would also need to have the gall bladder removed, but that ooperation could be scheduled for a more convenient time over the next few weeks. Questioning me about my lifestyle in order to determine what may have brought on the gall stones, the doctor asked, "Have you lost weight?" When I told him I had lost a significant amount over the previous year, he responded, "That's it, then. Weight loss can cause the formation of gall stones." The irony was too much. "No good deed..." I thought. At least it was going to be a brief hospital stay, which was important, as I was in the thick of planning my first big event as the Events and Volunteer Coordinator for Belmont Bay Science Center (recently renamed SciencePort).
However, after the endoscopy, the diagnosis changed. The gall bladder was inflamed and needed immediate removal. "Immediate" being as soon as they could schedule the surgery, which wasn't until the morning of day three at the hospital. There went my plans for an attempt at alternate treatment. I thought I was too young to be losing any of my parts, and I wanted to try the gall bladder flush procedure before giving up that particular part. I had a short pity party, maybe five or ten minutes of grieving with a few tears, before I decided that a gall bladder was a small price to pay for the benefits I have reaped from my lifestyle change over the prior year.
A friend who came to visit asked whether I had caused any trouble for the hospital staff. I had to admit I had not. That came the following day, when I instigated a game of toss from bed to bed with my roomie, using a surgical glove filled with ice. For Alma's entertainment, I drew a smiling face on the glove, making it look like a naked little doll with jaundice. I also showed her some of the dance steps I had been learning, as I kicked up my heels to the music on my CD player.
Throughout my hospital stay, the nurses kept gawking at my heart rate, which remained near 40. I asked my doctor why it would be so low. He replied with his own question, "Do you exercise?" I told him I did, spending an hour or an hour and a half on the ski machine almost every day. "That explains it, then," he said, "you have an athlete's heart." He noted that athletes have much lower heart rates than most people.
After the laproscopic gall bladder removal surgery, the surgeon came by to check on me as I was waking up. He looked at the monitor and noted, "I wish I had your heart rate. You have an athlete's heart!" Athlete's heart confirmed by two doctors, I felt proud. I had learned that life without a gall bladder isn't much--if any--different than life with, so I decided that a sick, unnecessary gall bladder was well worth giving up in exchange for an athlete's heart. Three weeks later, I am back to my usual exercise routine, my hospital stay is a fading memory, and my athlete's heart continues its cadence of 40 beats per minute, allowing me fifty or more additional years to step lively through this dance called life.
(c) 2005 Shay Seaborne. All rights reserved.
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