For the past month — since I came out of hospital — I’ve been kind of hiding from the fact that there might be something wrong with my heart. I’ve also been taking ß-blockers in an attempt to prevent me from fainting quite as much.
While that has been met with limited success — I don’t faint unless I’m really tired or super stressed — I’ve just received notification from my local hospital informing me that yes, I will be required to go into hospital for the implanting of an ILR.
An iLR — or Implantable Loop Recorder — is a small device that fits just below the skin in the chest area and keeps a recording of your heart. As the name suggests, the device is actually on a loop: it overwrites data unless you have something particularly interesting happen that it then either automatically records or stores if you tell it to.
The procedure itself is tiny. But I’m actually petrified of it, and I can’t actually say why. Perhaps it’s because i’ve come to tell myself that no, the problems I’ve been suffering form are simply stress-related faints rather than anything more sinister. Perhaps it’s because while I’ve had four or five major surgeries in my life and ever since my last one (in 2004) I’ve become a little bit of a ninny when it comes to such things.
But I’ve been doing some research to try and find out a little more about what it is I’ll be getting and how they work. And hopefully, no-one will tell me I can’t drive. Since I tend to have these ‘episodes’ in the evening, it hasn’t been a problem yet.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LXHJRKKd2g]
I guess it’s time to stop being such a wimp…