Skip. Like what happens when you hear a loud clap of thunder that makes you jump up out of your chair, but instead I’m just sitting at my desk in my quiet office, staring at the computer screen.

Flutter. Like the butterflies you get in your stomach when you’re nervous, but instead it happens in my chest while I’m sitting quietly on the couch, watching the evening news.

Race. Like when you’re watching your favorite sports team hit the winning shot right at the buzzer, but instead I’m sitting in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam.

These are the peculiar sensations I’ve been feeling in my chest lately. For the average person, they’re no big deal. For the anxious person, they’re pretty common. For someone who is about 3 months post-heart attack like me, they’re cause for concern. My primary care physician thought that these sensations were simply due to stress. She made me go to the cardiologist, who agreed that it was probably just stress because everything else looked fine, but hooked me up to a holter monitor just to be sure.

Holter monitor, hour 1

A holter monitor is a small, portable monitor that measures your heart’s rhythm. I wore this monitor for 48 hours last week. Every time I felt a skip, a flutter, or a racing sensation, I pressed a button on the side to record the sensation in the results and then I described in a little journal exactly what I felt and what I was doing when I felt it. At the end of the two days, someone read the monitor and compared it to the notes in my journal to figure out what was causing my heart to act up like this.

Holter monitor, 24 hours

My two biggest fears regarding the results were on opposite ends of the spectrum. On one hand, I was afraid that the results would come back totally normal and would not show anything wrong. You’d think this is the best case scenario, but for me and my anxious mind, it would mean that I’m just crazy and/or hallucinating these sensations when I absolutely KNEW I wasn’t. On the other hand, I was afraid that the results would come back showing something catastrophic, like my heart was giving out and I only had a few more days to live, all the while wondering how I even made it this long.

Holter monitor, hidden under my shirt and in my jeans pockets

I got the results back this week and, luckily, they were right where I’d want them to be, comforting every so slightly my chaotic mind. They found that my heart rhythm is normal and that the ‘fluttering’ sensations correlated with occasional premature heart beats. These are benign but can feel strange or abnormal. Ultimately, there is no clinical concern but I should try to control my stress levels, as stress exacerbates the prematurely timed beats.

So, I’m not going to die of heart failure any time soon, which is good news. I do feel the occasional skip and flutter but my mind doesn’t automatically assume the worst. I’m working on addressing the stress in my life, which is extremely difficult given that I’m a new mom with a hectic work schedule. I’m slowly getting to a point where, when I feel my heart make its weird beats, it feels a little more like this:

Skip. Like when I see Nick and Sebastian after a long day and it makes my heart skip a beat.

Flutter. Like when my closed eyelashes lightly brush against Nick’s closed eyelashes during a long kiss. 

Race. Like when Sebastian is about to roll over/crawl for the first time and I’m so nervous for him but I know he’s strong and can do it. 

I had my first panic attack in graduate school at the age of 29. I’m not exactly sure what triggered it but it was probably a combination of being under a lot of stress as I was working on my master’s thesis, not getting much sleep, and drinking too much caffeine.

The morning of my episode, I began experiencing vision problems, my heart was racing, my hands started tingling and then went numb, I kind of felt like I was in a cloud, and I just kept thinking that something terrible was about to happen and I was going to die. I texted Nick to tell him that something was wrong and that I loved him. Then I broke down in uncontrollable sobs right before my friend and I were supposed to conduct an interview for one of our classes and my friend, Aarti — who was absolutely amazing through the whole ordeal — kept me calm and drove me to student health. She helped me sign in and waited with me the whole time. Aarti, you’re truly the best!

photo source

When the student health doc couldn’t find anything physically wrong with me, she said, “Sometimes we think we feel things and that causes us to panic.” And that’s when I knew I had just experienced a panic attack. I looked up the symptoms and sure enough, it was text book. I also knew that some of my family members had similar experiences and were actually diagnosed with general anxiety disorder (GAD). I had a few more panic attacks after that but, because I knew what was happening, I was able to make it through them without incident.

Until I had a heart attack.

photo source

After I experienced a postpartum heart attack, my anxiety skyrocketed. Every little pain, every twinge, every time I felt lightheaded, every time I felt even slightly “off,” sent me into panic mode. I was constantly talking myself off the ledge. It took me about two weeks to realize that my medication dosage was too high, which causing a lot of unpleasant symptoms, and once my doctor lowered the dose, I felt much better. I also started seeing a therapist who has been a tremendous help. She taught me to use grounding techniques – small activities incorporating the five senses that bring your focus back to the present — which have been a life changer! I still have panicked moments where I start to feel anxious, nervous, or scared for no logical reason but they do happen less frequently. And when they do happen, I resort to one of my grounding techniques and I am able to remain fairly calm until the moment passes.

I began to wonder if I’ll ever feel “normal” again, or if I was really going to have to live with this for the rest of my life. In search of more resources to help me cope, I came across the book On Edge: A Journey Through Anxiety by Wall Street Journal reporter Andrea Petersen. I just finished it and I feel like it has really put a lot of things into perspective.

photo source: Goodreads 

While I was expecting a memoir with some stats sprinkled in, this book was actually kind of the opposite. Petersen does weave her personal history with anxiety into the facts and stats, but I felt like the majority of the book discussed anxiety history, research, and treatment.  I was a psych major in college, I’ve already read that text book. Nonetheless, it’s still a good read. Sprinkling in her experiences as examples made the material more tolerable and you find yourself really relating to her, especially if you also suffer from an anxiety disorder. Her experiences helped to put things into perspective for me. Strangely, it makes me feel better that we share a lot of the same triggers (anything health-related) but that she also has triggers that I thankfully do not have, like driving on highways. My therapist is glad that the book resonated with me and that I was able to use it to examine the anxiety in my own life.

Petersen does a good job of covering the history of anxiety, including old and new research, as well as old and new treatments. She highlights studies that show how anxiety could be genetic, how it affects children, and she shares her personal stories of her family’s genetics and childhood anxiety. She also dives into the topic of current treatments that include everything from talk therapy, exposure therapy, and of course, good ol’ medications.

Confession: my therapist has talked to me about taking meds for my anxiety and I was teetering on the fence. I don’t particularly want to take medication but I will if it’s the only thing that will help. I would use it as a last resort. BUT, after reading about Petersen’s experiences with side effects of the different meds she tried, I don’t think I’m interested in taking them. Especially after the side effects I dealt with from my heart meds; I think I’d rather feel anxious. But I’m really interested to hear others’ experiences with anxiety and medications.

If you’re suffering from anxiety, want to know more about the history and existence of anxiety, or if you just want to take a look inside the mind of an anxious person, then I would recommend this book. It might change your understanding of the illness and make you a little kinder to yourself and/or more understanding of others who experience it.

Linking up with: Spread the Kindness

I bought these pants at Zara last July on my trip to Los Angeles to visit my best friend so I call them my “LA pants.” On the day I got them, we had planned to go hiking in Griffith Park while Nick played golf but when K told me there was a Zara in the mall, I begged her to take me there instead. I wanted to be able to say I went shopping at Zara. Why this was a big deal to me, I still have no idea, but I went and ended up with these awesome pants. I only got to wear them a few times because I knew that I was pregnant and pretty soon they wouldn’t fit. So now I’m making up for lost time. I wore this outfit to work last week and received a few compliments. Not bad.

I like that the floral pattern has a lot of different colors; they’re pretty easy to match with different tops. I chose red for this outfit but I’ll probably go with pink next time and mustard after that. The possibilities are pretty much endless. I also really like the straight leg. While I think skinny jeans/pants look nice and are comfortable, I’m also a fan of the larger leg opening of straight and boot cut jeans because I think they can be just as flattering. And they make me look a little taller than I am!

Cardigan: ModCloth | Blouse: Le Tote | Trousers: Zara | Shoes: Banana Republic | Sunnies: Target

Participating in: Trend Spin Linkup

I’m only 32 years old.

I’m only 32 years old and super healthy.

And yet I had a heart attack over memorial day weekend. It was a shock to everyone… me, my family, my friends, and my doctors.

I think it was this video – and a few online articles – that helped me recognize just what was going on. I really encourage you to watch the video, read the articles, and familiarize yourself with the signs because it just might save your life. Here’s my story:

I woke up on Saturday morning feeling completely normal. I nursed Sebastian and when I laid back down in bed, I immediately started feeling pain and a tightening sensation in my chest, jaw pain that felt like I had been clenching my mouth closed for hours, and a weird discomfort in my left arm. I didn’t know exactly what was happening at first but I knew something wasn’t right. I stood up and started pacing around my bedroom, telling Nick that I didn’t feel good and I was afraid it was something serious this time. I said “this time” because I have a history of anxiety and having panic attacks and, while panic attacks are very disturbing and certainly feel ominous, they aren’t usually life threatening.  This was different, though. It felt wrong. We decided to go to urgent care where they determined that I had really high blood pressure (which is normally on the low side for me) and abnormal EKG results, so the doctor sent me to the emergency room. He didn’t say it but it was pretty obvious that something serious was happening.

In the ER, several blood tests revealed elevated enzymes that are only present when there has been damage to the heart muscle. This really alarmed the doctors because they had never seen these results in someone so young and healthy. They moved me to the ICU, and after a procedure where they inserted a catheter into the arteries around my heart — and finding no clogs or other blockages — the doctors finally concluded that I must have had a small tear in the coronary artery, called a dissection. Due to lack of risk factors, they also determined it was likely pregnancy related, as pregnancy itself causes a lot of strain on the heart. Essentially, they think the tear caused the lining of my artery to flap up and block blood flow to my heart, resulting in the heart attack. But, luckily, the flap was pushed back down into place pretty quickly and began repairing itself. Good job to my body on that one!

Cuddling with my Sebastian monkey after being moved out of the ICU.

My official diagnosis is Coronary Artery Dissection. Apparently, while this type of heart issue is rare, it is a common type of heart attack/issue in pregnant and postpartum women. They’ve put me on several medications for the next year that will thin my blood, keep my blood pressure stable, and help protect my heart as it continues to heal. I will also have many follow up appointments in the coming weeks and months.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all have a wonderful day full of family and food. Today I’m thankful for everything, as cliche as it sounds. My family, my home, my health, and all of the other good fortunes I’ve had. 2016 has been very rough on us and the world so I’m choosing to focus on all the positive things, no matter how small.

Even though I was laid off from my nonprofit job this month, Nick’s work is still going strong and we still have our warm and happy home to shelter us everyday. We also still have a silly little dog that continues to light up our lives and make us laugh regularly. We still have it all together despite the hardships and for that I am thankful.

My health is in tip-top shape and my pregnancy is progressing along beautifully. I haven’t endured much of the sickness or pains that can often come along with being pregnant. I’m happy and healthy and for that I am thankful.

We have the most wonderful friends and family a person could ask for. Throughout everything we’ve been through, especially in the past year, they’ve been there for us and offered their help in any way they could. My community is the best and for that I am thankful.

Last but not least, I am very thankful to those of you who read my blog! I know the internet is inundated with life and style blogs, but you entertain my little hobby by reading and commenting and participating and for that I am thankful.

The way I see it, things could be so much worse than they are right now. For all the good fortune I’ve had and for having the ability to put in the hard work to make it all possible is something for which I will be eternally thankful.