Learning to Live with PVCs

They are premature ventricular contractions.  It’s a type of heart arrhythmia  or irregular heartbeat that afflicts many people, and unfortunately, I’m one of those people.  I’ve had them since 2005, and most of the times they can be scary, it’s like your heart will just stop beating and then you’ll just drop dead (just like what my first cardiologist told me! — that’s why I looked for another one),  but then, my cardiologist keeps on telling me that there’s nothing to worry about, and that they are considered benign.  There are days when I don’t feel them, and I consider those days as I’m super blessed.  When you Google it, you’ll get lots of websites with informaton on PVCs, and most of them say that PVCs are benign, and that most people have them but just don’t notice them, and that the key is to ignore them because the more that you notice them, the more you’ll get nervous, the more that you’ll have lots of them.  So, it’s quite tricky, because it’s really difficult not to get nervous whenever you have them.  Really, and that’s an understatement. 

It’s very easy for other people to say that there’s nothing to be worried about when you’re suffering from PVCs — especially if they are not suffering from it themselves.  If you have PVCs for years, and nothing seems to cure it, despite taking medicines which just control it, you would trade it for anything just to get rid of it.

Again, when you go to Google to try to find out the causes of PVCs, you’ll get a very long list, caffeine, stress, electrolytes, hormonal imbalance, lack of sleep, low potassium levels, low magnesium levels.  I’ve been through this list a lot of times, and I’ve had blood work-up to rule out some of them, but I still have these PVCs.

It’s been 5 years, but I still haven’t gotten used to it, and I don’t think I will ever be.  I just want them to stop, and for good.  So, right now, I’m having another round of work-up to try to find out what’s causing it, and I’m off to see an electrophysiologist to see what he can do about it.  An electrophysiologist is actually a cardiologist, who specializes in the electricity of the heart.  I’ve been delaying seeing an electrophysiologist, but I think I should give it my priority now, especially after the treadmill stress test that I had last week, which had Equivocal result (according to the doctor — neither normal or abnormal result).

So, right now, I’m just hoping and praying that the next round of tests that I will have will turn out normal, especially the Nuclear Heart Scan that I’m scheduled to undergo on Saturday.