Admit it, you’ve got that song in your head now haven’t you?
You can thank me later.
I hope a lot of you will already know what this post is
about, but I have a bit of an ulterior motive in writing it. We all know I’m a
compulsive researcher, and I've been looking for information on Peripartum Cardiomyopathy since I was diagnosed but found very little: A Wiki post here,
a teeny tiny study there,
and a Facebook group with a pocket sized membership. I hope that Google does a
good job of indexing this piece because I’d like anyone searching for Peripartum Cardiomyopathy to have something to read.
How many times can I say those words before it gets boring
do you think?
So back to Esme being born and me sitting in a hospital bed
in a haze of post birth hormones having cuddles and feeding and already
wondering when I’ll be able to go home when a happy young nurse bimbles over to
do my obs.
Pulse – Excellent
BP – Beautiful
Oxygen Saturation – Shot-to-shit.
Nurse “Hmm, do you feel OK?”
internal monologue
says “I've been awake for 3 days and just had major surgery, what do you reckon
champ?”
My actual reply “Umm, not too bad”
Nurse” You appear to be crackling”
Me ”Am I not supposed to be doing that?”
Nurse “Not s’much”
Herein starts one of the most confusing periods of my life.
I was given an ECG, carted off for an x-ray the sum total of
which was something was very wrong with my chest. It was full of fluid and my
heart, for reasons unknown at this point, needed help.
Emmie and I were packed up and moved straight over to
Cardiology where a lovely midwife sat with us through the night and I was
started on some diuretics. I was offered beta blockers as well but declined
them on the basis that I was told at the time that it would have prevented me from breast feeding.
This did not please the consultant who somehow felt a good
way to motivate me was to ask whether I cared about my health.
I was so annoyed at the whole exchange I had to tell the
world of Facebook of my disgust which not only made me feel better, it also had the unexpected bonus
of getting me a new consultant who actually gave a good god damn about me and
my needs.
The next few weeks were confusing because there was a lot of
conflicting evidence as to whether I had suffered a heart attack or heart
failure. The ECGs said one thing, the blood tests another and it was a very
frustrating place to be when you don’t know what any of it means to your future
prospects.
I was on strict bed rest and hooked up to remote telemetry
monitored at the nurses desk. If anyone wonders if these things work, they do.
I was blessed with a visit from family and friends a few days into my hospital
stay and the excitement of it made my heart rate soar. They were at the door like
a crack squad of Hare Krishna telling me I needed to calm down before I brought
on a repeat performance.
They had a point, the place was a clown short of the Moscow
State Circus.
So every day they took more blood and ran more ECGs. I sat
in bed with my baby girl and watched crappy daytime TV. I took drugs, got
weighed, measured, prodded and poked.
They took me for an angiogram and I'm not sure whether I was
more repulsed or fascinated by watching real time images of my own heart
beating.
By this point I was becoming something of a minor celebrity
in the cardiology world because nobody could pinpoint what had happened or why.
I was discussed at length, expert opinions sought and I got so very tired of
hearing “In my years of practice, I have never seen this before”.
I was low by this point, trapped in hospital when I wanted
to be out starting my new family life and getting nowhere fast and when the
consultant came to see me saying they wanted me to stay in for another few days
I lost my ever loving shit and bawled for 4 straight hours.
I didn't stop bawling until the consultant came back and relented, saying
as long as I promised not to move I could go home after all. I think perhaps
the crack squad had been onto him about what he was doing to their telemetry.
So I move home I did, and behave myself I did, living on the
sofa day and night and taking slow steady steps back to a normal life.
I left hospital still without a clear diagnosis of what had
happened. All they knew was my ECG was returning to normal (although my heart
was still in moderate failure) and there had been no further acute episodes so
all they had left to try was to run yet more tests after a few months to see
what kind of after effects they could see.
There were none, and so to quote my cardiologist, "In the absence
of any other indicators, we can only say that you suffered Peripartum Cardiomyopathy (literally meaning heart failure at or around the time of birth) from which you have now recovered".
The prognosis for me a good one: my heart being completely
normal now and the only question that remains is whether we can or should have
any more children.
I don’t have an answer for that yet, but I'm working on it.
Best sentence: " I think perhaps the crack squad had been onto him about what he was doing to their telemetry."
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you were able to go on and have Olive, did they ever find out why you went into heart failure? was it just pure exertion of giving birth?
Thank you :) Well if you believe the anecdotal evidence, it seems likely that I had a reaction to one of the drugs that was used during my C-section. This is fairly impossible to prove of course, but the lack of cardiac history, coupled with the rapid recovery means that it is the most logical answer.
DeleteI agree with you.
ReplyDeleteHello, I know this is an old post. But I too suffer from perinatal cardiomyopathy. My story is a bit different. Delivered baby just fine, no issues with vitals during or after labor. This was my 3rd child. I was diagnosed after my echocardiogram shows that I had a low ejection fraction. Meaning the amount of or force if the blood being pumped out of my heart. Also my left ventricle is dialled. Which there is another name for this. Which I believe it called ventricular dilated the cardiomyopathy . But I wanted to tell you once of the first things they told me was that having more children will mostly damage my heart again or possibly more. And that I should consider that if thinking about having more. Which I was already getting tubes tied, so I had no problems with that.
ReplyDelete