Event Heart Monitor...sigh

So I went to see my family doctor to check on the cyst on my heart that I had drained a couple years back. After a CT scan, my doc said it was still small and nothing to worry about. Okay..fine with me. But, I keep having these heart flutters, missed beats, and out of rhythm beats. They sometimes wake me up and that's a little unnerving to say the least.

A little history:
As a teenager, I kept having pains in my chest and the flutters, missed beats, and out of rhythm beats. I was tested again and again and nothing was found. They couldn't catch my heart doing these things because when my heart would act this way, I was always away from the doctor's office. They didn't bother to give me a heart monitor to wear either, which is odd. It turns out it may have been from the large cyst on my heart that no one seemed to catch on the x-ray or cat-scans at that time. I had to have had the cyst since birth because a big nerve runs across the cyst and that's why they couldn't remove the cyst, only drain it. I did have the cyst drained back in 2007, but the symptoms were still present. We decided to give my heart some time to heal and wait a year to see if the symptoms were still bothering me. Well, they are.

Back to the present:
I spent this past Thanksgiving with my dad and sister in Zanesville. When I arrived home, I saw a UPS package by my door. "Hmmm...what's this?" I thought. "I hope I won something!" Ha ha ha...nope, it was a heart monitor. I remembered then that my doctor said she was going to send for one and I would have to wear it for a month. What this contraption does is monitor your heart and when you have an "event", that's when you notice your heart doing something it shouldn't, you press the "record" button and it records from 45 seconds before you hit the record button to 15 seconds after you pressed the button. Pretty cool. So, it keeps about a minute of your heart beats in storage at all times. I guess this is called "looping".

If you've ever had an EKG done at the doctors or hospital, you know what I mean when I say there are electrodes, I have two I wear, on my chest. There are like 10 on an EKG, so me having to wear only two is great. I stick the electrodes on my skin, one right below the clavicle on my right pectoral muscle, and the other electrode just below my left pectoral muscle. Now, I have no muscle tone at all there right now, so we can assume they mean "man-boob"..LOL There are two buttons on the electrodes where you snap corresponding wires, and they are plugged into a little black box that has a belt clip on it. Looks like a little Walkman (showing my age here), except there are wires going to your chest, not your ears. (smile)

I can shower with the electrodes on(not the wires, of course), but I have to change them every other day. The total time I need to wear this thing is a month, so this is a great way to "catch" my heart doing what it shouldn't be doing since I cannot ask it to act crazy for me on a whim.

Oh, funny thing..I need to send the recorded information every couple days. How is this done? Well, you need a landline, first of all. Then you call the tech people at some 800 number, they tell you to place the phone on the black box and press send on the box. There is a screeching noise that sends the data to the tech's which prints out as an EKG. Pretty cool, huh? Now, can anyone guess what the screeching sound is? Yep....a modem baby!! Remember modems?....deedrrrrrdeeedrrrrrquaaaaaaahhhhhhhdeeedrrrdeeedrrrrquaaaahhh!!. I have to listen to that for a solid minute while the little black box sends the information. Why isn't there like a USB plug or something in it to send over the Internet. Hello? It is 2008 people!!
Ugh...oh well. Maybe they'll find something and maybe they won't. It could just be a genetic thing passed to me by my mother's family or something since they have a history of this happening to their hearts. (according to something my mom mentioned a long time ago). It's worth checking out though. I'll keep ya posted.