Pancreatitis, SVT, and Cardioversion

 Pancreatitis, SVT, and Cardioversion

 

    Another thing I had trouble with was pancreatitis. I would just wake up and suddenly be in excruciating pain and I would need to go to the ER. No doubt, this was sometimes due to the night eating I did from sleeping pills. Sometimes I would already be in the hospital for some other reason and I would develop pancreatitis as a secondary problem. When my gallbladder was removed, I seemed to be more prone to getting pancreatitis. I was always treated with IV Dilaudid and told I could not eat or drink anything until my enzymes came down, and this often took a weeks’ time. Then I would be put on a clear liquid diet. If I could tolerate that for a day, then I would be allowed to eat a normal meal. If I couldn’t, I would go another day without food, and continue with the IV Dilaudid. I ended up in the hospital with pancreatitis during Thanksgiving, in 2011. My grandfather passed away during this time and I was not be able to attend his funeral. I was hoping I could get a pass to leave for a few hours, like I was able to do at my other hospital. I never got to ask though, as my pancreatitis was very painful, and I required a bit longer of a stay. It took me a while to get over his passing.

    I needed to have a few endoscopies over the course of a few years to clear my biliary ducts of sludge and stones that would get stuck there, now that I didn’t have a gallbladder. The buildup was the cause of the majority of my pancreatitis episodes. On the morning of one of my procedures, I did my usual morning vitals. I used my incentive spirometer and noticed my heart suddenly felt like it was beating abnormally fast. When I checked my pulse, I was shocked to see that it was now stuck in the 180s. I was experiencing supraventricular tachycardia or SVT. I went to my procedure as planned. When the medical staff saw how high my pulse was, they said they could not do the procedure. My lung transplant doctor happened to be in the same suite, as he was set to do a bronchoscopy on another patient. He made some calls and set me up to go to another floor for cardioversion. I would be put to sleep for a minute or two while they shocked my heart back into a normal rhythm. I was told the scar tissue from my double lung transplant had caused some interference with the electrical rhythm of my heart. I was awake before they could even take the tape off of my chest from where they did the cardioversion. Thankfully, my heart has not gone out of rhythm again. I would eventually be placed on Ursodiol, a bile salt, as the result of several endocsopies and I would not have any more pancreatitis episodes after that.