For someone who already has children aged 5, 4 and 2, her fourth pregnancy was uneventful. The 2 year old is my only girl and this 4th pregnancy was supposed to be her little sister, but I had a failed attempt at the Shettles method and was due for another boy.
At 26 weeks my nesting mania hit and I decided to go for it. absolutely, actively I wasn’t going to endure another second of horrible dark paint on my dining room walls. After breakfast, I grabbed a butter knife and went to work.
As I cried with joy and tried to feed my miracle baby, who had survived hours of tachycardia, double doses of adenosine, two cardioverts, and a lot of stress, my face hit me. I went up and found the Terminator.
The paint covered the ancient textured wallpaper, which began to flake off to my satisfaction when I carved it with a butter knife. A long strip of brand new walls peeked out. It was just like peeling an orange. How long does it take to explore the entire dining room? A few hours max?
I had been scraping for about 20 minutes at most, when suddenly I felt a small, almost audible sound. click into my chest. My heart started racing.
When I say race, I mean 210 heart beats per minute by the time my husband took me to the OB’s hospital emergency room 45 minutes later. They shoved me into the exam room (avoiding the bleeding and moaning patients who are obviously pregnant), started the IV, and…it stopped.
I was confused, but they allowed me to wait for another episode and do the test. Nothing else happened and I spent four miserable days in a hospital bed. I passed all the tests and went home with a Holter EKG to keep track of my next symptoms. A Holter EKG is like a Walkman with electrodes attached to it that are stuck across the torso and that he must keep on 24/7.
Ten annoying days later, I was driving home from the dentist with my two year old. click — My heart started beating again. Very fast tachycardia can cause light-headedness, dizziness, and panic. I don’t feel very good. I was almost at the top of Coldwater Canyon and was driving back into the canyon from Beverly Hills on a windy one-way lane with nowhere to pull over. I resolved to myself not to pass out.
I called my husband, and he came home from work to meet me in the parking lot of the Ralph’s supermarket at Ventura and Coldwater.
We (he drove) dropped the toddler home and my mom was watching the other kids, so he rushed me to a smaller hospital nearby. It wasn’t the same hospital I’d been to before.
Just like last time, I was taken to the ER like some special delicate princess. But this time, the moment the doctor came in, my sneaky heart didn’t return to normal right away, it kept beating faster and faster. As the room filled with nurses, doctors, and OBs, I suddenly felt like I was living in a real-life episode of “ER.” When they decided to give me adenosine, my heart rate was reaching 220 beats per minute.
They immediately kicked the husband out of the room. His mother came and she persuaded him to sit on the shelf.
Adenosine is an intravenous drug used to restart the heart in emergencies. It literally stops the heartbeat, allowing the heart to “restart” itself. They warned me that it would be very unpleasant. That was an understatement. You can physically feel the adenosine as it travels up your arm and into your chest. It felt like cold, sticky death itself was invading my body. When it spreads, you moan and want to cringe. The first dose had no effect, so a second dose was given. Nothing yet!
It is known that during pregnancy, the body is filled with excess water, which causes the short-lived adenosine to disappear before it reaches the heart.
It’s time for them to bring in the big guns. The plan was to cardiovert me. This is literally the kind of paddle you see in the movies when you yell “Clear!” But first they would knock me out with propofol, the milky drug that killed Michael Jackson. If it was good enough for the King of Pop, it was good enough for me.
The hospital’s chief OB came to me and said he’d never performed electrocardiotomy on a pregnant woman before, so he was going to “Google it.” He told me about the chances of survival for a 27 week old fetus if he had to do an emergency C-section and comforted me that babies that age tend to do very well in the NICU and that the baby would be fine. He gave it to me.
It wasn’t until many years later that I realized that the only situation he would perform an emergency C-section on me was if I was dead or dying. It was probably mentioned in the paperwork I had to sign in a daze, but I’m thankful he didn’t explain it at the time.
They were ready to leave. My heart had been beating for almost 4 hours at that point and I was confused. It feels like I’ve been running for four hours straight and I’m in a mild medical panic. And I was given no food or water for hours. This is enough to throw a person at 27 weeks pregnant into confusion.
Life or death, I just wanted it all to end. Propofol was the best moment of my life. Suddenly I was on a paradise beach, full of peace and happiness. I can see why Michael Jackson loved this. There are worse ways. I didn’t feel the first cardioversion, the paddles. — they felt, but I vaguely felt the second one — huge pressure and loud noise.
Then I woke up – and everything was quiet. I feel better. My mind is back to normal! Everyone in the room cheered and brought my husband to see me and we cried. I survived and my baby made it through this ordeal.
Even better news. Miraculously, one of the cardiologists who happened to be available that day was an electrophysiologist who specializes in the heart like me. He took one look at my EKG readings and instantly diagnosed my type of tachycardia as exactly what’s called “atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia.” There is a defect in the heart’s electrical circuitry, which causes the heart to beat incorrectly when activated. I might add that this electrophysiologist was from South America and was as handsome as a movie star. I actually guest starred on an episode of “ER,” I’ll tell you.
I told Dr. Dreamy that I had actually had some random episodes in the past where my heart would start racing and I would feel dizzy, but then it stopped and I wasn’t thinking about anything. It turns out I have a genetic problem with my heart and this time with his 4th pregnancy and the wallpaper blitz attack it was made worse.
They put me on beta blockers and told me to come back after delivery to have a cardiac ablation. This means running wires from the arteries in your hip to your heart and using heat to literally burn out the bad circuits.
At 38 weeks, another attack occurred, which resolved without intervention. My OB ordered me to come the next week for the induction ceremony. Enough was enough.
I was given a pure potassium drip to keep my heart down during the birth. Potassium IV is like delivering acid into your veins. Finally, we plugged it in, gave her an epidural, gave her Pitocin, and waited for her birth. I wanted to get this poor kid out of there already – he had been through enough.
I was the same.
While watching “Terminator 2” in the hospital room, my husband fell asleep around 11 p.m. At 11:45, alone with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the contractions started like a freight train hitting a wall.
Within five minutes I was surrounded and people were yelling at me to push! Her husband was in his pajamas, dazed and trying his best to meet the fourth male doula, or “dula” as I called him.
The baby arrived at 12:07am without any issues and was looking very handsome and smoking hot. he’s a nice little guy. It’s not a joke, it’s a real woman killer.
As I cried with joy and tried to feed my miracle baby, who had survived hours of tachycardia, double doses of adenosine, two cardioversions, and a lot of stress, my face hit me. I went up and found the Terminator.
No one had turned off the television. I didn’t have time. “T2” was playing throughout the birth.
A carefully planned birth plan set to the sweet tones of Mozart and Vangelis, soothing tantric yoga melodies, candles, and aromatherapy just wasn’t for me.
A raw potassium fire coursed through my veins and 1980s cyborgs.
But who cares? We both succeeded! Birth plan? Girl, please. Birth plans are for wimps.
And today — today, my little (almost!) Ladykiller turned 13 years old. Happy Birthday, Terminator #4! You will always have my heart.
This essay was originally Peachy Keenan’s extremely homely songs.
