Pitter Patter... THUMP

Pitter. Patter. Pitter. Patter. Pitter. Patter... THUMP. Pitter. Patter. Pitter. Patter. Pitter. Patter... THUMP. This is the sound (sort of) that greeted me as I checked my pulse while lying down trying to nap on Monday afternoon. Heart was beating (always a good thing), a little fast (that's all right, I suppose), but then would pause for a beat (uh oh), and then go BOOM with a really strong beat (um, WTF?). Needless to say, I didn't fall asleep that nap time (kind of afraid to, and was a bit uncomfortable anyway).

Called my OB, and talked with Dr. P., who said it sounds like palpitations and that they're not too unusual, but then:

- Oh wait, you've the one with WPW, right?

- Well, yes, I had WPW until I had it "fixed" about a decade ago, and my cardiologist says it no longer shows up in my EKG, but yeah that's me.

- Okay then, why don't you make an appointment with your cardiologist, and he can do an EKG and maybe a Holter monitor to check it all out.

So, on Friday morning I will go see Dr. F. and see what the deal is. Hopefully it's nothing, and was just the result of me starting to freak out about the price of day care in Northern New Jersey.

Oh, about that WPW. It stands for Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, and means that I was born with an extra conduction pathway for the electrical signal that starts the heartbeat. At times this pathway can get activated (sort of like my heart beat taking a shortcut) and start a rapid heartbeat or tachycardia. I first started having episodes when I was about 6, and they were pretty manageable until I started rowing freshman year in college (so I quit the team, had tests done, was put on medication, and then was able to row all of sophomore year). Medication worked for a while until an episode in grad school (working out at the gym) that sent me to the emergency room with a heartbeat of over 200 bpm. This prompted my doctor's urging that I finally did something surgical to fix the issue. So in 1997 I had a catheter ablation to get rid of the extra pathway. Since then I've been episode-free. I'm not sure if WPW can come back after that, but I certainly hope not, especially not now!

Is it catching? One thing that I will be interested in finding out is if I have passed on this wonderful cardiac quirk to my wee little babe. Though it doesn't look like I acquired the trait through heredity, it does have a genetic component and I could pass it on myself. Since our trisomy results at the NT screen were so good, we opted out of the CVS and amnio, and didn't feel the necessity to go through those tests just to find out whether the WPW gene was present. We can test for it after birth, which I think we will. And while I don't wish WPW on anyone, at least, if my baby has it, it's something Momma has spent her lifetime dealing with, so hopefully it won't freak me out too much to see it happening. LOL, yeah, not. It's one thing to go through something yourself, entirely another to watch someone else suffer (witness my anxiety over DH's hernia surgery Friday -- which went super well, by the way). Guess I should talk to my Momma, and see how she felt!