It started with a single visit to the emergency room at the VA medical center for a tachycardia run of about 156 beats per minute on my heart.
They gave me IVs and brought me under control and sent me home.
In the weeks since, I have been in their emergency room three different times getting the same treatment..bring it under control… make me medically stable and send me home.
The next two times I went, they admitted me to the hospital for a couple of days each time and medicated me and monitored my heart rate overnight and worked out a plan.
The plan was (is) for me to go to an electrophysiologist at a nearby civilian hospital (Kettering) to try to get the heart rate controlled with either medicine or a cardio-version procedure or a pace maker or what ever is on their mind.
I am hoping we can do it with medicines, though the medicines I got at the VA work somewhat well but I still spend days and nights in low grade tachycardia although I am assured that the 126-beats-per-minute rate I am experiencing is safe for me, taking into account the extremely thorough battery of tests that I was put through and the number of cardiologists I have seen.
I have the idea of invasive procedures and am hoping and praying they can do what they need to do with medicines alone.
So I sit at home watching my little hand-held single lead ekg graph making sure that I do not exceed the safe thresholds that I was told to watch for before returning to the emergency rooms.
So here I am.. an extremely old man …with a heart condition …
But I know that God is doing something good….
And no matter what happens, I will never lose faith in Jesus Christ.