Last week I woke up in the night with my heart pounding out of my chest.  I laid there thinking “eventually this is going to stop”.. and it did.  It took quite a while, longer than I felt was normal but I went on back to sleep and didn’t think any more of it.  The next day I’m walking around the house, cleaning up and I feel my heart skip.  I pause for a second and then go about my business.  A few minutes later, another skip.  Hummm.  So I go about my day and occasionally I get these skips - I try to ignore them for the most part but there were times when I’d have 2 or 3 in a row.  Ok, THAT scared me.  Everyone has PVC’s (skipped beats) and most people don’t feel them.  Some people do and compare them to “butterflies” or something similar.  I was born with sinus arrhythmia.  This is a benign condition and doesn’t hurt anything.  Basically my lung capacity is quite large and when I breathe in, my heart feels that the expansion in my chest is an obstacle and in turn it speeds up to push the blood through, when I exhale, the expansion is deflated and my heart says “oh cool, take a break” so it stops for a second or two and then beats normally again - until I inhale and then the cycle starts all over.  I never feel this stuff, unless I have my fingers on my wrist or neck.  These PVC’s I can feel.  When my heart is bounding at 120 - 130 beats a minute, I can feel that too.  I don’t like it.  I thought at first it was the atarax because it can play around with the cardiovascular system, so, I stopped taking it.  The itch is horrid but sudden death is worse, you know?  I saw my doc about it yesterday and he sent me to radiology for a holter monitor.  I was assured the tape they used to hold the electrodes on my body was “hypo allergenic” but apparently my skin doesn’t care.  I itched ALL NIGHT LONG.  My chest was driving me crazy and I had hives under the tape and it was just maddening.  I had to wear the monitor for a full 24 hours and I swear I did it for my kids.  There’s no way I could have left that tape on for 24 hours if it wasn’t for them.

Anyway, I’ll find out the results of the holter on Wednesday.