In May of 2014, I was in the eighth grade, just about to enter high school. I had just been accepted into the Early College, and my life was going great. I was a happy thirteen-year-old-- constantly thinking about my upcoming birthday and the next book I was going to read.
It was around late April when I first noticed that something was wrong. I was constantly tired, didn't have much energy, and just didn't feel right. I passed it off as a headache or a cold, never really thinking too much about it. My heart would race, but I just ignored it, assuming that it was just anxiety or something of the sort.
I never could have imagined what was coming.
In the first week of May, I began to get dizzy. I told my teacher, I was in a science class at the moment, and he sent me to the nurse's office. The nurse wasn't available that day, as we shared a school nurse with another school in the area, so the school guidance counselor, who was also a first responder, decided to check me out. I knew in my heart that something was wrong.
The counselor hooked me up to a blood pressure machine, just to make sure that everything was okay. The machine didn't read, so she tried it again. Still nothing. After two or three more times, she held her fingers to my neck in order to check the pulse radially.
I'll never forget the look on her face as she looked up at me. The concern and fear in her eyes scared me. She told me to be still, that she was calling my parents and an ambulance.
Twenty seconds into taking my pulse, she had counted 90 beats.
The average person's pulse runs at about 70-100 beats per minutes (bpm). Mine was going much, much faster-- close to 200 bpm. The next thing I knew, the principles were in the room, having me sit in a wheel chair and pushing me outside to sit in the shade and wait on the ambulance.
The next few hours went by in a blur. The guidance counselor rode with me in the back of the ambulance to the nearest hospital, where we met my parents. I was soon transferred to a large children's hospital in a nearby city. They didn't know what was wrong, why exactly my heart was going so fast.
They tried to stop my heart several times. There's only one way to describe it: empty. From the time you are born, your heart is beating. You never really think about it going away. The doctors inserted a medicine into my IV that stopped my heart for a few seconds at a time, hoping that it would get my heart to slow down. A nurse held one hand and my mother held the other as the medicine creeped through my veins.
All I remember is that horrible, empty feeling. You can't breathe, you can't see-- all you can think about is regaining that heartbeat. And when it comes back, it's a wave of relief-- until you realize that the medicine didn't work.
The next week was spent in the hospital. I was diagnosed with Atrial Ectopic Tachycardia-- a rare form of arrhythmia. They tried me on a medicine that didn't work, and it was determined that it would require a medical procedure to correct it.
On the morning of June 3rd, 2014, I went into surgery. I don't remember much of that morning. The procedure was supposed to take 2-3 hours, but mine took close to eight. The doctors initially thought that the tissue causing the problem was in one of the sides of my heart. Turns out, it wasn't in either side-- it was in the wall between. They had to switch out equipment in order to find it.
They froze/burnt the tissue, causing my pulse rate to return to normal. I woke up a few hours later, thankful to be alive.
There's a reason why I told this story. While this was an absolutely terrifying and extremely trying time in my life, I was able to learn some things out of it.
I was able to understand that no matter how hard times may be, there's always people who have it worse.
I was able to learn to appreciate the little things: you never know when it's going to be ripped away from you.
Sit back and relax. Breathe in, breathe out. Cherish every single moment. Learn to love yourself.
Appreciate each beat of your heart, each breath you take. You never know when it'll be your last.
