The journey begins

So my first appointment at The Royal Brompton was good, as I finally got to talk to a doctor who understood my condition. He put me back on the Midodrine, as when it didn't work the first time the dose should have been increased rather than stopped.

I went away happy that something was being done and I looked forward to my next appointment.

In the meantime my husband had been keeping a log, on an excel spreadsheet, of all my collapses and I decided that I would also go to an Osteopath to see if she could help me, but more about that in another blog post.

My next appointment was after christmas. I was put on another drug called Ivabradine, which I was to take with the Midodrine. My consultant told me that he wanted me to have a Reveal© device implanted into my chest to monitor what happened to my heart when I collapsed.

Well, I was offered an appointment for the implant and it was on our wedding anniversary. I took the appointment, as I thought it was best to get it over with. But, to cut a long story short (I will blog about it later), it was cancelled on the day after I'd been at the hospital for over 8 hours and hadn't eaten since 9 o'clock the previous evening.

Eventually, after a very angry letter was sent to my consultant, I was given another appointment for April 2012. This time it all went ahead. Mine was the first operation of the day and I was on my way home by 2.30pm the same day.

I was given a remote device so that I could get the implant to record when I collapsed. After a while, the recorded information showed that my heart was actually stopping, so back into hospital I went for a chat with my consultant about having a pacemaker.

We decided to go for a pacemaker and I said that it would need to be implanted before my litle girl started school in September.

You might think that this was a daunting prospect, but I was actually relieved as it meant my children would no longer be scared every time I collapsed.

My appointment came through for the last week in August and I went into hospital for two nights.

I will post more about the actual experience on my next blog.