Arrhythmia Personal Narrative

At the age of 12, I was at the peak of my athletic life. I started cheerleading to get a new experience in life. I grew to love the sport. As competition season was coming up, I started pushing myself harder than I had ever been. The night of my first performance, I collapsed on the floor in severe pain, feeling like I had a ton of weight pressed onto my chest. I tried my best to push through it but the pain was to much to bare. My father rushed to the gym and drove me to ER, the doctors had multiple tests ran on me. The doctors didn't know where to start, they started with an EKG. This test showed that everything was normal, they were confused. They started over and ran an angiogram on me, this is where they take an X-ray to see if my blood flow was normal, and again they came back

regular. The doctors had me go to a Pulmonologist (a doctor who specializes in lungs) this was an hour long wait to sit in a small box that has a little tube for me to breath into. She told me that when i work out or push myself I get acute asthma attacks, she then prescribed me an inhaler. I went on and figured I was fine to begin practicing again, the attacks began to decrease in pain but became more frequent. Months later the attacks started to came back with the pain, but worse.

I got sent to Mercy Heart Rhythm Center. The doctors proceeded to tell me that nothing was wrong, but decided that they would send me home with a heart monitor. I had a button that I had to push every time I experienced the pain in my chest, it would be sent back to the doctors to view them. I had an appointment six months later to go over the results. The results came back that I have Arrhythmia, which is when you have an irregular heartbeat. The doctors proceeded to tell me that it was something that I had to deal with as life went on and it had a chance of going away with time. I still have to deal with the pain to this day. This has made me grow to love what doctors do. Being able to help with children who have to suffer in their life, or not being able to keep up with the other children because their health doesn't allow them to, would be the highlight of my life. But most of all being able to come up with new diagnoses and new discoveries in the medical field would be a great milestone for me to surpass. Not only has this experience made me grow as a person but it has also made my love for pediatrics

stronger.